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Some 
Southern Questions 



BY 
WILUAM ALEXANDER MacCORKLE. LLD. 

LATE GOVERNOR OF WEST VIRGINIA 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

XLbc 'Rnicfterbocliet press 

1908 



f^ 



<< 






Two Copies Received 

DEC 5 i908 
cwss .gib. xxc, '10, 

COPY 3. 



Copyright, 1908 

BY 

WILLIAM ALEXANDER MacCORKLE 



XTbe f^nicherbocltec prees, new ]i?orft 



to 

JOSEPH E. CHILTON and WILWAM E. CHILTON 

MY PARTNERS AND THE FRIENDS OE MANY YEARS 
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATEI,Y INSCRIBED 



PREFACE 

THIS book is composed of six addresses, delivered 
at various times and places, on questions in which 
the South is interested. 

The first address discusses The Negro and the In- 
telligence and Property Franchise, and was delivered 
before the Southern Conference of Race Problems at 
Montgomery, Alabama, May 9, 1900. 

The second deals with Some Phases of the Race 
Question, and was delivered before the Southern 
Industrial Convention at Huntsville, Alabama, Octo- 
ber, 12, 1899. 

The third considers The Attitude of the Progressive 
South, and was delivered at the Annual Dinner of the 
Board of Trade of Newark, New Jersey, January 18, 
1900. 

The fourth considers The Experience of this Repub- 
lic as to the Elective Franchise, and was delivered be- 
fore the Nineteenth Century Club in New York City, 
January 15, 1901. 

The fifth discusses Some Tendencies of the Day, and 
was delivered before the Societies of Roanoke Col- 
lege, Salem, Virginia, June 10, 1902. 

The sixth is a discussion of The Patriotism of the 
South in Reference to the Conditions of the Times. The 



vi Preface 

last was delivered at the Commencement of Washing- 
ton and l/ee University at Lexington, Virginia, on June 
17, 1908. 

As will be seen the addresses were intended for the 
platform and they are printed just as they were de- 
livered, with no change of verbiage or sentiment. 

I can give no excuses for publishing them, beyond 
the hope that in some small degree they might assist 
in the settlement of the grave questions confronting 
the South. 

Chari,e;ston, West Virginia, 
July 25, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. THE NEGRO AND THE INTEI^WGENCE 

AND PROPERTY FRANCHISES . . I 

II. THE RACE QUESTION .... 47 

III. THE ATTITUDE OF THE PROGRESSIVE 

SOUTH Ill 

IV. THE EI.ECTIVE FRANCHISE . . . 149 

V. SOME TENDENCIES OF THE DAY . . 215 

VI. THE PATRIOTISM OF THE SOUTH IN 
REFERENCE TO THE CONDITIONS OF 
THE TIMES 248 



THE NEGRO AND THE INTElvLIGENCE AND 
PROPERTY FRANCHISES 

BY the overkind appreciation of tlie Chairman of the 
Committee, I am asked to conclude the debate 
on this great question, which has within it such 
potentiaHties for good or evil to this land, resting under 
the splendor of the May-day sunshine, a land from 
whose kingly plenitude of moral and material worth 
man can reap more abundantly and more easily than 
at any time since, by the Divine command, fruition was 
crowned with the toil of the hands. 

Coming from the moimtains of West Virginia, within 
the sound of the flow of the Beautiful River, yet I am 
no stranger to Alabama or to her traditions and her 
glory ; and when, inchning her proud head to the in- 
scrutable commands of the Great Ruler of governments 
and armies, she pressed to her pure lips in the day of 
her agony and sorrow the cup filled with the bitter 
waters of Marah, I and mine, from the same chalice of 
suffering, drank the consuming draught of humiliation 
and distress. 



2 Some So\itKem Questions 

This fair city, pulsating with busy life, hallowed with 
memories of the past, laden to-day with the sweet lux- 
uriance and redolency of springtime flowers typical of 
that resurrection which will not wither with the passing 
of their fragrance, where amidst your foliage-embowered 
streets I seem to hear the thunderous tread of a mighty 
spirit, is to me the Mecca of a pilgrimage which I ap- 
proach with bared head and unsandaled feet. Holding 
views as to this great question under discussion differ- 
ing somewhat from those of the distinguished and hon- 
ored sons of the South who have preceded me, yet I 
yield to them nothing, not a hand's breadth, in love for 
the South, reverence for her glorious past, and glowing 
hope for the sure consummation of her splendid destiny. 

Seeing first the light of day and passing the spring- 
time of life in the town where sleep, under the soft 
shadows of our mountains, Lee and Jackson, words un- 
true to the South uttered on this classic scene would 
blister the tongue of him who gave them birth. Every 
tradition of my people, their joys, their sorrows, and 
their loves, have their resting-place on the spotless and 
consecrated bosom of old Virginia, and my every hope 
and ambition for the future is intertwined in the welfare 
and good of the South. The limpid sunlight of the 
South and the azure of her sky hold me in a spell which 
appeals to my soul with a witchery far more potent 
than happier material conditions amidst other associa- 
tions and surrounded by other peoples. For her sake, 
the old home, fragrant with precious and unspeakable 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 3 

memories of the smile around the hearth and rich with 
the sunlight of the gentle voices in the wide halls in 
other and happier days, echoes to the footsteps of the 
alien master ; and our fields, under the Divine ordering 
of Him who, with impartial hand, distils the dew and 
scatters the sunshine, yield their treasures of rich grain 
to the hand of the stranger. For her sake, without 
repining, I have sat at the widow's board, where the 
barrel of meal wasted and the cruse of oil failed ; and 
whilst differing on this question with possibly a majority 
of the audience before me, yet in the sweet words of 
affection, old as the love which crowned with glory of 
surpassing light the tall pines on the lonely mountains 
of Moab and gladdened the ripening grain in the 
harvest-fields of Judea, ' ' Entreat me not to leave thee 
or return from following after thee, for whither thou 
goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge." 

Appreciating the importance of this great question 
to our country, and well recognizing my poverty of 
experience and ability, I approach the discussion with 
that difl&dence born of a desire that no spirit except the 
love of my country shall guide my statements and direct 
my thoughts. On the threshold I pray to the good 
God of our people that we may reason with each other 
in a spirit of calmness which will lead us to that high 
plane where we can put away all feelings less holy than 
the love of country, and from the sublime heights of 
true patriotism look down on every unworthy ambition. 

The settlement of the Race Question, in the present 



4 Some SoutKern Questions 

acute condition of the public mind, will take its true 
direction within the next few years; and the South 
deserves to have the true expression and the honest 
action of her sons, unclouded and unbiased by personal 
ambition or untrammelled by partisan command. Never 
before did modern civilization have such deep and abid- 
ing interest in the ultimate action of a portion of its 
elements as it has now in the action of the people of 
the South. Here, I pray and believe, will be witnessed 
the sublimest consummation of true statesmanship and 
realization of popular government by a people, who, 
though prejudiced by local conditions, hampered by 
another and alien race, and vexed by social and eco- 
nomic conditions such as never before beset a people, 
yet rising above the complications of the hour, are 
honestly, impartiall}^, without prejudice, and with full 
justice solving this question to the glory of the whole 
people. Surely, it will take all of our strength to close 
rightly the only question which has kept apart the 
people of this mighty Republic, and which has given 
anxious thought to those who look towards our land 
for the blessed realization of a government by the 
people. Only in a spirit of compromise, as exemplified 
by the Fathers, who gave up cherished convictions 
that all might meet on a plane on which a government 
could be inaugurated and successfully conducted, can 
we to-day succeed. " And thus the Constitution which 
we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity and of 
that mutual deference and concession which the peculi- 



Intelligence and Property KrancKises 5 

arity of our political situation rendered indispensable." 
The obeisance which we owe the glorious traditions of 
our past, and the commanding position of the South in 
this marvellous and splendid cycle of material develop- 
ment, demand that sobriety of action, tolerance of 
spirit, and charity of opinion which has ever character- 
ized a free people in the solving of the great questions 
which meet every people designed by Providence for a 
permanent place among the nations. Says Mr. Hume : 

"There are enough of zealots on both sides who 
kindle up the passions of their partisans, and, under 
the pretence of public good, pursue the interest and 
ends of their particular faction. For my part, I shall 
always be more fond of promoting moderation than 
zeal ; though perhaps the surest way of producing mod- 
eration in every party is to increase our zeal for the 
public. lyCt us therefore try, if it be possible, from the 
foregoing to draw a lesson of moderation with regard to 
the parties into which our country is at present divided ; 
at the same time, that we allow not this moderation to 
abate the industry and passion with which every indi- 
vidual is bound to pursue the good of his country." 

In the solution of this great problem, surely we can 
rise above the heat of political discussion, and show to 
the world complete abnegation of previously formed 
opinion, and allow our spirits to be touched by that 
charity which comes alone from Him who, amidst the 
complexities of change and despair of our futture, has 
always guided us in those ways best for His people. 



6 Some SovitHern Qxiestions 

I shall not attempt to discuss the minor and infinitely 
varied details of this important question. I shall 
rather briefly, and in my humble way, found my argu- 
ment upon the basic principles of our national exist- 
ence, and upon some general principles, and not waste 
your time in assaulting the outworks of the citadel. 

The settlement of this franchise question lies deep 
upon the very foundation-stones of the Republic, and 
only by laying bare to the people's view those mighty 
substructures can we here eflSciently serve our country. 

Every historic state is underlaid with a fundamental 
principle, from which it breathes its life and through 
which it has its civil existence. Each of our colonies 
had its pecuUar idea of government; but after they 
were bound in one glorious, shining union of States, 
that great principle of civil philosophy, the right of the 
people to govern through its own suffrage, shone as 
the glory of heaven. The State became the sovereign 
through the power of its own people, and the preser- 
vation of its liberty was predicated upon the people. 

Therefore, I assert that the constitutional exercise of 
the right of franchise is the vital and underlying prin- 
ciple of the life of this free people, and that the in- 
fraction of this principle is surely attended with ultimate 
ruin to our system of republican government. " In 
democracy, there can be no exercise of sovereignty but 
by the suffrages of the people which are their will." 

Sir, this is fundamental, and, in this splendid presence, 
it but needs expression to receive assent. Stripped of 



Intelligence and Property KrancKises 7 

every covering, it is but the annunciation of the right 
of the people to choose their servants, indicate their 
policy, and live under the laws they themselves have 
created. When you depart from this principle, you 
forsake the underlying principle of national govern- 
ment; and when this is done, surely you drop out of 
the nations which exercise an abiding power upon 
civilization. 

To enable our country to consummate its destiny, 
this vital principle, at the risk of weariness of expres- 
sion, must be kept close to the hearts of the people. 
It is the golden thread, which at everj^ stage of our 
national existence, through storm and battle and 
change, has been held by the patriots to inhere into 
the very texture of national life. When this principle 
is abandoned or impaired, 

" Our own 
Like free states foregone, is but a bright leaf torn 
From Time's dark forest, and on the wide gust thrown 
To float a while, by varj'ing eddies borne ; 
And sink at last forever ! " 

Says Montesquieu: "It is plain, then, that if the 
government, whether State or Federal, controls or dis- 
poses of suffrage, or allows it to be disposed of, without 
warrant in the Constitution, it strikes at the very vitals 
of the republic from which it derives its entire existence 
and power." 

In all the ages, the ruin of free nations has been 
wrought through the insidious sapping and impairing 



8 Some SoiatHern Qviestions 

of the fundamental principle vitalizing the govern- 
ment. I appeal to the historic past as the unerring 
guide to the future. I am reminded that the power 
of the Great Republic stretches this year into two 
hemispheres; that in ships and money and all of the 
elements of power and grandeur and civilization since 
the morning stars sang together she has not had her 
equal. Permit me, sir, to recall to you that the real 
impairment of the integrity of the governing principle 
of every historic state dated from the brightest splendor 
of its existence and not from the hour of its weakness. 
I call from the solemn past the phantom memories of 
Greece and Judea and kingly Rome. When the silks 
and purple and fine linen of Tyre and Sidon were in 
every market-place, and the light of the star of the 
Blessed Redeemer was already touching with its holy 
fires the lofty towers of the Temple of the I^iving 
Jehovah, Judea was stricken. When the genius of 
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Euripides 
held in mortal thrall the intelligence of the world, and 
the statue of Pallas Athenae and the columned Par- 
thenon looked down on the Piraeus, filled with the 
ships from the Kuxine, the ^gean, and from beyond 
the Pillars of Hercules, and when the glory from Sala- 
mis and Thermopylae thrilled the people and lighted 
up the beacons of Democracy on Naxos and Delos and 
the Islands of the Sea, Greece was stricken. When 
her arms extended from Dacia to the Desert of Libya, 
and the thunderous tread of her legions shook the 



Intelligence and Property KrancHises 9 

known world, and her mariners plucked the fruit from 
the mystic Garden of the Hesperides, and the oar-beat 
of her triremes shook the mist of the Hyperborean 
Seas, and Gaul and Scythian and Christian appealed 
to her royal power, Rome was stricken. 

But, sir, the student of the philosophy of govern- 
ment points to the important distinction that Rome 
and Greece were guarded by the genius of the philoso- 
phers, and Judea by the patriarchs, the prophets, and 
the lawgivers, but that neither Greece nor Rome nor 
Judea was illumined by the Master, upon whose 
teachings are founded the principles of the modern 
state. In reply, sir, Holland, a modem state, is an 
illustration of the immutable rule that, whether under 
the teachings of the brows encircled by the chaplet of 
ivy and laurel or by the Crown of Thorns, the 
basic principle of civil life controlling the state cannot 
be impaired without ultimate ruin. Under the inspira- 
tion of religion, uplifted by the genius of freedom, 
grasping the great principle of representative union of 
Hansetown and Provence, defying Spain, establishing 
her colonies in all the earth, bidding fair to become 
a great, abiding, historic people and divide with Eng- 
land the control of the commercial and civilizing in- 
fluences of the world, Holland, intoxicated with power, 
forgot the basic principle which made her great, and 
sank to the rank of a lesser national power having no 
future historic importance. 

Then, sir, reasoning from the past, with all the 



lo Some SovitKern Qviestions 

intensity of my life, I plead for the maintenance, in its 
original integrity, of the underlying principle of our 
Republic. It is supremely vital to liberty. Dethrone 
the principle from its high estate, and the temple of 
lyiberty is already tottering. Political apostasy is ter- 
rible in its reach and grasp of power and in the quick 
emulation of its example. The infraction of the right 
of franchise, the impairment of the constitutional right 
of the citizen to exercise the franchise in South Caro- 
lina or in Alabama, provoke the desire and willingness 
to commit the same wrong in the populous city of New 
York or in Pennsylvania. The passing of enactments 
at Montgomery or Charleston, interfering with and re- 
stricting the franchise against the spirit of the Con- 
stitution and its amendments, provokes the terror of 
the Force Bill in the National House and Senate. The 
impairment of the constitutional right in the States 
causes equal emulation for the destruction of our 
constitutional guarantees by laying the hand of 
political apostasy upon the Constitution of the United 
States. 

" Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage 
and 3'ou prepare your own limbs to wear them. Ac- 
customed to trample on the rights of others, you have 
lost the strength of your own independence and become 
the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises 
among you." 

Men desiring to grasp unconstitutional power heed 
little the cry of a people that any infraction of that 



Intelligence and Property KrancKises n 

great instrument by them was caused by the overween- 
ing necessity of preserving their civilization from de- 
struction. At this transition period of the world's 
history, the conservative forces of the country should 
be on their guard to save the Republic from any im- 
pairment of its fundamental principles. The times are 
surely propitious for such injury to our governing prin- 
ciple, and the example of its infraction too recent to 
brook denial. The growth of the sentiment that the 
Constitution is what the majority of the people wish it 
to be, the growing power of wealth and class in the 
elections, the increasing control of the central govern- 
ment and its gradual infringement upon the rights of 
the States, the overweening power of the Federal Courts 
upon every pretext seeking to control State tribunals 
and exercise jurisdiction never contemplated by the 
Constitution, the lessening respect for the elective fran- 
chise, and the want of regard for the dignity of the 
States, sadly illustrated to-day by the warring govern- 
ments of a free commonwealth, all show the vital 
demand for the jealous care of the Constitution in all 
of its original vigor. 

Now, sir, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitu- 
tion, "That the right of the citizens of the United 
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the 
United States or by any state on account of race, color, 
or previous condition of servitude," is as much a part 
and parcel of the organic law governing this country 
as any section of the Constitution. "Whether wisely or 



12 Some SoxitKem Qxiestions 

not this amendment was ratified, I will not discuss, 
but under its provisions the Negro has with you and 
me an equal right to exercise the franchise. If we are 
an honest and constitution-loving people, we will give 
him his constitutional right. His privilege of franchise 
is as sacred as ours, and should be as sacredly guarded. 
This is the only principle which should animate the 
life of a free republic and upon which its continued ex- 
istence can be predicated. I challenge any transgression 
whatsoever without ultimate and grievous hurt to the 
Constitution, and as grave injury to the white man as 
to the black. It is, I repeat and urge, the most sacred 
and solemn principle of the Constitution. With what- 
ever earnestness I may have, I ' ' declare that this ark 
of our political covenant, this Constitutional casket of 
our Confederated Nation, encasing as it does more of 
human liberty and human security and human life than 
any government ever founded by man, I would not 
break for the whole African race." 

If we have, under the trying exigencies of the days 
of Reconstruction and new citizenship, wandered away 
from the spirit of the Constitution, let us ascend the 
mountains where we can see the tables of the law. 
Here, in this sacred city, consecrated with the life and 
blood and treasure of our people to the Constitution of 
our Fathers, I call upon our people to gather again 
within its majestic portals and hear the law and give 
full heed to its commands. 

There can be but one response upon this question 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 13 

from those who have communed in the sacred temple 
of the Constitution with the mighty beings who builded 
the sacred edifice, I answer for them that this ques- 
tion cannot be settled until it is settled right. I base 
my statement upon the eternal foundation of historic 
precedent and universal experience. I appeal to the 
facts of our own history which culminated in this city 
in the great drama which fiercely rocked the walls of 
civilization. I appeal for my argtunent to one higher 
than Caesar. The deepening and broadening sense of 
eternal justice in the human heart decreed that slavery 
was wrong. The institution was surrounded by powers 
which never before girdled a civil institution. It was 
held in the letter of the law. It was hedged about by 
a patriotism unquestioned. It was jealously protected 
by the party which for sixty years had fought the bat- 
tles of the Republic and which had added to it an im- 
perial domain and which was deeply intrenched in the 
affections of the people. It was supported by the most 
supremely equipped statesmen who ever dazzled the 
world by the power of human intellect and statecraft. 
It was settled as the law of the land, by the binding 
decisions of the highest courts from whose decrees there 
was no appeal except to the supreme forum of the 
human heart. At the sacred birth of States, around 
whose bedsides sat the armed and panoplied and watch- 
fill hosts of the institution, it was settled. By solemn 
compromise of North and South, sealed by the House 
and Senate, by friend and foe, it was settled. By every 



14 Some SoxitKern Questions 

human relation it was settled. Men walked in apparent 
security. Yet, sir, in that greatest forum under God, 
the eternal, immutable, unchangeable forum of human 
right, it was not settled. Before its bar the decrees 
of the highest earthly tribunal were dissipated as the 
morning dew. In the splendor of its court solemn en- 
actment of Legislature and Senate and State was de- 
voured as by consuming flames. Under its fiery ordeal 
compromise of statesmen shrivelled to ashes. It was 
not settled right ; and not until decree of court and act 
of law and compromise of statesmen were deluged in 
blood, was it settled. I speak with no unkindness but 
with unspeakable tenderness of the memories of other 
days ; and not for your imperial State, with its fields 
and flowing rivers and glowing furnaces, would I say 
aught unkind of the motives of the men who gave their 
sacred lives for what they believed was right. It illus- 
trates, beyond the power of my tongue of weakness, 
that which I am striving to accentuate, that no ques- 
tion can be settled by a free people until it is settled in 
the forum of eternal justice. So I insist that until this 
question is settled right and in strict accord with the 
letter and spirit of the Constitution it will disturb our 
political relations, hold apart the North and South, 
hamper our development, degrade our civil liberty, 
pollute our franchise, endanger our freedom, and pillory 
us before the world as a people who do not do full and 
exact justice. 
Sir, I beg that 5'ou will not understand for a moment 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 15 

that these words are a concession that the real letter 
of the Constitution has been carelessly and wantonly- 
violated by the South. I deny this charge with all my 
soul. I spurn with unspeakable contempt the reports 
of the frauds, violence, and intimidation with which 
the enemies of the South asperse her fair name. Her 
glory and her honor are to me as dear as life. Lay the 
book of nations wide open, and in all of the days there 
is none which through temptation and humiliation and 
sorrow has walked so steadily along the road of good 
government as has the South. Goaded with the bayo- 
net, hedged about with the soldier, hounded by the 
alien, despoiled by the robber, her statehood decrowned 
and deflowered, since the morning of the world show 
me a country which emerged from suffering with gar- 
ments as spotless and with so little of the smell of the 
fire about her. Yet, sir, while rejecting with disdain the 
calumnies against the South, still the time is upon us 
when we should commune with each other in a spirit 
of absolute fairness and most outspoken candor. It 
would be false to the spirit of truth pervading this Con- 
ference for me to deny that the South, appealing to a 
higher law than the Constitution or the statute, has 
never intended that the Negro should rule, or largely 
participate in the rule of her broad States and shape 
the destiny of her civilization. The time is here for 
plainness of speech, and he who would palter with the 
truth on this great question in its present portentous 
shape loves not his country. It is our duty to stand 



i6 Some SoutKem Questions 

before the world and not swerve from the open light of 
discussion. If such has not been the intention of the 
South, then we are asked why this State Constitution 
provides the rule of understanding to be interpreted by 
the ballot commissioner as he may wish ? Why this 
Constitution has inserted in it the ancestral clause? 
Why this Constitution provides a complicated election 
machinery? When you answer these insistent ques- 
tions, j^our only reply can be that the great paramount 
reason for such action has been to preserve the State in 
the rule of the intelligent. With this reply there arises 
before us a broken and impaired Constitution, which 
has unloosed from its Pandora's box the foul vultures 
of coming woe, which are always ready to flap their 
wings about the dying body of a free people. It is 
from this anomalous condition of political affairs that 
the South must be released ; and every Southern man, 
without regard to his political future, should rise to 
that height of love for country, where, caring not for 
the clamor of the hour, despising present utilitarianism, 
he can contemplate a country unbroken in its love, rich 
in material glory and domestic peace, over whose 
happy, contented, and united people is the shadow of 
a Constitution which, under the mercy of God, needs 
not to be broken to serve the higher law. If there be 
any faint-hearted and who would shrink, I would re- 
mind him that the day is surely propitious for the 
coming change ; that there is upon the South one of 
those great cycles where 



Intelligence and Property KrancKises 17 

" All are raised and borne 
By that great current in its onward sweep, 
Wandering and rippling with caressing waves 
Around green islands with the breath 
Of flowers that never wither." 

This cycle of industrial glory and regeneration, broad- 
ening like a golden river through the South, is assist- 
ing, with resistless power, the coming change. When 
the South was practically stationary in its develop- 
ment, when the planter waited for the rain to distil its 
drops into the cotton and the grain to imprison the 
gold of the sunshine, political anomalies, comparatively 
speaking, were unimportant. To-day the old South is 
being resurrected in a new form and exceeding glory. 
New peoples are clasping our hands, and, as bone of 
our bone, we are bidding them welcome to the dear 
land. Millions of dollars start the music of the machine 
and the engine. Mills are distilling their cloudy in- 
cense over our increasing fields. New cities lift their 
towering walls to the glory of our prosperity. Golden 
genii rise from the dark mines of the earth and hold 
out to us their offerings of commercial greatness. Our 
waterfalls are enthralled to add to our fulness, and the 
imerring winds of modem commerce have filled our 
harbors with the ships of the world. 

The first demand of this industrial regeneration is 
the absolute settlement of political complexities. Its 
demand is even now insistent and we cannot, if we 
would, longer deny its potential request. The State 



i8 Some SovitHern Qviestions 

whicli does so delay will not march abreast with its 
fellows in the industrial progress. This demand is as 
absolute and certain as any condition which ever 
touched a commercial and industrial existence. Then 
arises the crucial question, how can we remove our 
political complexities, give the Negro his franchise, 
and preserve the Constitution and at the same time 
not imperil our civilization ? I reply that it seems to 
me by far the best to adopt an honest and inflexible 
educational and property basis administered fairly for 
black and white. By this method the white race con- 
trols the States he has created, and this control is 
based upon the eternal foundations of the law and 
the Constitution. 

I crave your indulgence for a short time whilst I 
discuss this idea of an educational and property fran- 
chise, not in any detail, but in some of its higher and 
more general aspects. It appeals to the elements most 
needed in good citizenship. It will cultivate the de- 
sire for the acquisition of property and of education ; 
and whilst attaining these two great ends of good gov- 
ernment it will accomplish the immediate purpose for 
which we are striving, the settling and composing of 
our anomalous system of franchise. All of us hail 
the day of highest intelligence in those who control 
the government. Ignorance is the bottom of our woe. 
With the Negro made intelligent he is no longer dan- 
gerous to the State. He is no longer prey to the 
demagogue. With this system walks education with 



Intelligence and Property FrancHises 19 

its uplifting and splendid effect upon the people. It 
is a necessary and vitalizing concomitant of the re- 
stricted franchise. This plan will not destroy the so 
essential self-respect of the Negro. It will allow him, 
through the open door, to see the play of the brightest 
light which touches the brow of any man, the splendid 
sun of American citizenship. He can grasp it, if he v^ 

wishes it, without delay or wrong. It is his if he com- 
plies with the law, whose equal and fair provisions 
compel him to be a better citizen of his country, and a 
more intelligent and potent factor in his place. I be- 
lieve that it would be an incentive to the acquisition 
of intelligence which could be attained so quickly in 
no other manner. He will no longer be the mere flot- 
sam and jetsam of politics. My experience of political 
affairs is that as the Negro becomes intelligent so surely 
does he become a higher voting element, owing al- 
legiance to no party as a mere matter of course. More 
than this, the adoption of this plan will bring to the 
South a fair, quick, and honest trial of the question of 
the Negro franchise. It will bring it in a manner 
which will cause no apprehension in the minds of any 
fair citizen. The question of Negro franchise has never 
yet been fairly tried. I^t us a moment discuss this 
question. It is most important. The objection has 
been strenuously made against the adoption of a fair 
franchise system that we cannot safely proceed in the 
change. Is this a fair objection ? I reiterate, sir, that 
it is not. Will the civilization of the South be affected 



20 Some Southern Qviestions 

or impaired ? Will the Negro vote overwhelm that of 
the white? Is there necessity for the appeal to the 
law of the Higher Defence ? An investigation of the 
status of the franchise shows that after the adoption 
of an intelligence and property basis the political con- 
trol of the South will be entirely under the domination 
of the white man. A fair intelligence basis will practi- 
cally produce the same result. An intelligence and prop- 
erty basis will give numerical control to the white man 
entirely in every State, congressional district, and, with 
only few exceptions, in every county in the South. There 
is no shadow of suspicion that this fair franchise amend- 
ment will again give the Negroes control of the South. 
Day by day, even the spectre of such contention dis- 
appears before the industrial growth of the South. 
Within the last few years from every country is seen 
the line of immigration into the South. Along our 
roads, in the streets of our cities, over our once quiet 
fields, is heard the tramp of the thousands of feet of 
those coming amongst us for the occupation of their 
lives. Further, the white man is increasing in a far 
greater ratio than the Negro. Aye, sir, we appeal to 
the populations as they stand to-day, and, with all of the 
earnestness demanded by the importance of the ques- 
tion, I ask, how can ten millions of comparatively igno- 
rant Negroes overwhelm the civilization of twenty 
millions of white people with the intelligence of all 
the centuries behind them ? Let us be fair, Mr. Chair- 
man. Let us look the facts squarely in the face, and 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 21 

not listen to our prejudices and our fears without 
foundation for either. I am reminded that we have 
once drunk of a bitter cup; that we have tried the 
Negro franchise ; that upon the consideration of a fair 
franchise there arises before us the horrid phantasma- 
goria of the Reconstruction. Sir, every intelligent 
man, submitting himself to the calm, cold light of 
reason, must admit the absolute change of circum- 
stances between then and now. There is no need 
for argument on this proposition. Consider your- 
self the status of affairs at that day, and you must 
admit that the Negro franchise was not fairly tried. 
The South prostrated, the boom of the cannon yet 
reverberating over the land, passions inflamed, men 
yet wearing the blue and the gray, the sword not yet 
turned into the scythe and the pruning-hook, the fields 
unploughed except by the furrow of war, your State 
government in the hands of j^our then enemy, your 
citizens disfranchised, with bound hands, standing 
about the ruins of their homes, the Negro only five 
years out of slavery and a citizen, I ask you, Mr. 
Chairman, in all fairness, are not the conditions 
changed as no conditions have ever been changed in 
any country within that period of time? Under this 
impartial view, I earnestly urge that no fair-minded 
man can say that a fair franchise in the South will 
bring back the days of Negro rule or the horrors of 
Reconstruction . 
A careful investigation of the figures by Mr. Gannet, 



22 Some SoxatHem Questions 

a most careful and able expert, fully maintains my 
contention. Let us appeal to the figures. 

The three States of the South in which the Negro 
element is in greatest strength are South Carolina, 
Mississippi, and Louisiana. If, by restricting suffrage 
in these States to the literate or to the property holders, 
or to the literate and the property holders, it would leave 
the whites in numerical majority, such restriction in 
other States would certainly have similar effect. 

First, then, as to the matter of property holding. I 
find that the owners of farms and homes in the three 
States in question are as follows : 



Farms and 


Homes. 




Louisiana — 






White owners 




, 48,660 


Colored owners 




, 14,602 


Mississippi — 






White owners 




61,500 


Colored owners 




. 16,956 


South Carolina — 






White owners 




42,982 


Colored owners 




21,101 



From the above, it is seen that, if the suffrage were 
restricted to those owning their farms or homes, the 
whites of South Carolina would outnumber the colored 
two to one ; of Mississippi, nearly four to one ; and of 
Louisiana, three and one-half to one. 



Intelligence and Property KrancKises 23 

The next question is on the matter of illiteracy, and 
here I present the following table, showing the total 
males and the illiterates over twenty years of age : 

South Caroi^ina. 

Whites. Colored. 

Males over 20 . . 106,665 139.479 

Illiterate . . 15,814 91,387 



Literate . . 90,851 48,092 

Mississippi. 





Whites. 


Colored. 


Males over 20 


• . 125,457 


157,202 


Illiterate 


. • I3>932 


106,463 


Literate 


. . 111,525 
Louisiana. 


50,739 




Whites. 


Colored. 


Males over 20 


. . 136,106 


125,194 


Illiterate 


. . 24,161 


90,487 



Literate . . iii,945 34. 7^7 

Here we see that, if the sufirage be restricted to the 
literate, the whites of South Carolina would outnumber 
the colored nearly tw^o to one ; those of Mississippi, 
more than two to one ; and those of Louisiana, more 
than three to one. 

It must be remembered that these figures represent 



24 Some SoxitKern Questions 

the situation as it existed ten years ago. Doubtless, 
the Negroes have gained upon the whites in Hteracy 
to some extent during the decade, but certainly not 
sufficiently to change the general result. 

In the light of these figures, can the argument of 
fear of Negro domination be sustained ? 

It is true that our first duty is the preservation of the 
civilization of the South upon the lines of our race, and 
this franchise provision does so upon the firm basis of 
justice and fairness. Then, sir, should we remain 
longer chained to the past?' 

I^et us consider a most practical and potent reason 
why, as soon as possible, this or some other plan of 
settlement should be adopted which will hurry the 
Negro along the road of intelligent and settled citizen- 
ship. In this day of industrial and financial change, 
the South, in the adjustment of the commercial affairs 
in the next twenty-five years, will be the chief factor. 
We can no longer devote ourselves to the one and sole 
idea of holding ourselves solid on the Negro Question. 
Believing in the Southern leaders and trusting to their 
guidance in the past, still with the most absolute ear- 
nestness I believe that the time for change is upon us. 
The South has other things to occupy its attention. 
The great objection to the present sj^stem is that it 
demands our absolute attention and effectiveness to the 
exclusion of all else. We are busy. We are growing 
rich. We are the seat of a great commerce. Wealth 
is coming among us. This demands that we should 



Intelligence and Property KrancHises 25 

have freedom of action to take advantage of our oppor- 
tunities. How can we proceed on the grand march of 
industrial progress when our whole attention is ab- 
sorbed with our inherent political complexities ? Surely 
this settlement must be made and this question for- 
ever closed, so there will be nothing to distract our 
attention from the great question of developing the 
South in the manner which it deserves. That problem 
behind us, how easy will it be for us to grasp our im- 
perial opportunities ! The tyranny of the solid vote to 
be maintained on the one question is the most burden- 
some and exhausting which ever afliicted a people. 
Let us now cast it off. 

More than this will arise out of the commercial 
change of to-day. As surely as we live, this marvel- 
lous industrial transformation of the South will sooner 
or later produce a division among us on the great 
questions of commerce. It is sure to do so. In every 
progressive Southern State, it has already made a di- 
vision of the white voters. In my State, it has made an 
absolute and almost equal division of the vote. Under 
this condition of affairs, the Negro vote will count, and 
will surely be consulted. It is inevitable. We cannot 
put off the day. Then let that vote be intelligent and 
carry with it the dignity and consideration of property- 
owning and intelUgence. Let the status of the voter 
be settled and the question will be out of the way and 
behind us. We do not wish to emulate the condition of 
affairs exemplified by the monarchies of Europe and be 



26 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

compelled to entirely devote our lives to the public 
safety. 

Believing in the preservation of our civilization and 
holding to all the time-honored sentiments of the South, 
yet I believe that the changed condition of affairs to- 
day demands that the South should settle emphatically 
and once for all this great political question. Should 
prejudice stand in the way when almost rising to our 
splendid destiny ? Should time-honored opinions in- 
terfere with our progress ? Out from the shadows of 
the cloud, how glorious would be the light of our day ! 
Relieved from its paralyzing effect, what country could 
equal our achievements ! In the words of a great 
English statesman : "Or shall we expect from time, 
the physician of brutes, a lingering and uncertain 
deliverance ? Shall we wait to be happy till we can 
forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness 
of our faculties a tranquillity which ought to be the 
effect of their strength ? Far otherwise. I^et us set 
all our past and present afflictions at once before our 
eyes. I^et us resolve to overcome them, instead of 
flying from them, or wearing out the sense of them by 
long and ignominious patience. Instead of palliating 
remedies, let us use the incisive knife and the caustic, 
search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate 
and radical cure." 

A fair and honest franchise will once for all settle 
the question of Negro domination, the mere fear of 
which has been so great a blight to the South. 



Intelligence and Property FrancHises 27 

Delaying the settlement of the status of the Negro 
will, under the circumstances, but lose us precious 
time. The Negroes will in time become voters, full 
and free voters, and with our absolute and ultimate 
approbation and consent. Delay will not affect the 
final result. This may seem a bold statement, but if 
you will indulge me I will appeal to your experience 
for my justification. 

Every argument of memory and experience teaches 
us that this question is surely solving itself in the 
ultimate direction of broad political liberty for the 
Negro. It is useless to controvert it. To-day, beyond 
denial, it is nearer a liberal solution than ever before. 
Under Providence, excepting the first great shock of 
civil fi-anchise granted to the Negro, the other steps 
towards the broader enfranchisement have proceeded 
step by step, and under the assimilating and soothing 
process of time they have been without jar to our feel- 
ings or wound to the body politic. There has been no 
backward movement. It has been purely forward all 
the time. I challenge contradiction to this statement. 
I mean political and civil advancement. I adhere to 
absolute social and racial separation as earnestly as 
any one to whom I speak. Social and racial separation 
is the salvation of both races. I^oose Memory's chain 
and wander with me over the South, enter the court- 
house and legislature and the marts of business, and 
you yourself will be amazed at your unconscious change 
of sentiment in the direction of liberality towards the 



28 Some SoxitKern Questions 

Negro. When he was a slave, we gave our fathers 
and sons to death, and deluged with blood this fair 
country to retain him as a slave ; and yet within the 
sound of my voice there is not a man who, for all the 
land between the swelling seas, would rivet a fetter on 
the arm of a Negro. Stand with me in the sacred 
halls of Justice. I remember when a Negro's oath 
was not taken. Yet to-day an intelligent Negro on 
the witness-stand is accepted without question ; and 
if he has been an honest man, no difference is made 
between him and a white man of equal character. 

That which has distinguished the Anglo-Saxon in 
all times is the right of jury. The jur>'man must be a 
free man, and under the sun of Australia or the snows 
of the North, the jury has gone as the badge of the 
Anglo-Saxon. I remember when a Negro darkened 
no jury in my State ; yet, to-day, Negro jurymen 
have been found by those experienced in the work 
of the court-house, to be, without question, safe and 
conservative. 

In my town, with a prescience of the future beyond 
the wisdom of his day, Stonewall Jackson taught a 
Negro Sunday-school, at times against vehement pro- 
test and under threats of prosecution. To-day we have 
spent a hundred millions upon the Negro school, and 
not for the wealth of the Indies would we close them 
to him. In your business life his every step has been 
against a protest, but he has made his place within the 
march of affairs, and as great as the changes have been, 



Intelligence and Property KrancKises 29 

they meet your and my approbation, showing the sure 
and almost unconscious progress to a widening senti- 
ment for a most liberal solution of this political question 
in the direction I plead. 

Then, sir, if the result of your experience points to 
the future as I have indicated, does not every reason 
of an intelligent and far-seeing statesmanship demand 
that we settle this status at once in the direction of an 
intelligent voting power? Does not the spirit of the 
day abroad in the land demand our wise and liberal 
action? Now arises an important question. If the 
South, far-seeing and liberal in its policy towards the 
Negro, should adopt a liberal franchise provision, can 
the Negro on his part ever become imbued with the 
American spirit ? Will he ever become a citizen suf- 
ficiently intelligent so as to become a substantial integral 
portion of the American voting population ? Will the 
progress shown on our part by the adoption of this free 
and equal basis of franchise meet any progress on the 
part of the Negro ? 

Are his feet on the ascending steps of a good citizen- 
ship? Is he improving in character, in religion, in 
material prosperity, in self-respect? Sir, I appeal to 
that tribunal which is more powerful for enlightenment 
than gathered statistics. I summon here as proofs the 
result of your own observation. I point to the spires 
rising heavenward all over this land and sheltering an 
increasing number of dusky and intelligent worshippers. 
I call here in witness the homes where, under their 



30 Some SovitHerni Qxiestions 

own fig-tree and vine, live in plenty and sweet content- 
ment increasing numbers of the Negro race. Yea, 
Mr. Chairman, I point to the thousands of intelligent 
students crowding the halls of learning in the South 
and filling every situation open to them with credit 
and character. I call to your attention a greater in- 
crease within the time in material prosperity than falls 
to the lot of any other race excepting the Anglo-Saxon 
in the wide world. I appeal to your own experience 
as to the vast change for the better in the horde of 
unlettered and ignorant Negroes within one genera- 
tion. Within three generations mark his improvement 
from the barbarian, bound and gyved, and thrust over 
the side of the slave-ship and given to us. There has 
been disappointment and discouragement, it is true, 
but the progress has been substantial and on the right 
line. I will not take your time with the discussion of 
the detail of a proposition which is obvious to all. 
I have given somewhat of study to the question of 
his improvement, and a careful investigation of the 
only people whose shackles within our time have been 
broken, leads me to the conclusion, and it is the con- 
clusion of every careful student of the emancipated 
serfs of Russia, that the Negro has infinitely out- 
progressed the freed white serf in every element of 
an enlightened citizenship. Surely he has improved. 
This has been the general consensus of opinion and 
the observation and experience alike of the statesman, 
the scholar, and the man of business of the South. 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 31 

When I see the progress of the Negro and the sure 
improvement of the conditions surrounding him, the 
darkness which tinges the bright skies of the South 
brings me no despair. Out of the cloud should not 
come despair, but the sweet gladness of hope brighten- 
ing our every difficulty. The evidences of His supreme 
care over us are too unmistakable for despair, and the 
cloud of witnesses that His care encompasses this na- 
tion, and that with the fingers of His wisdom he has 
placed these people among us, will admit of no ques- 
tion. When commerce languished and its utmost gates 
lay behind the white sails, and the rivers of India no 
longer gave their gold and the fields their gems, and 
the cunning hands of the Kast no longer wove the silk 
and garments of mankind, the treasury of plenitude 
of this new land yielded richer gems and gold more 
plentiful than ever glistened in Indian rivers or bur- 
dened with the glory of wealth the mines of Golconda. 
When the golden belt and the steel armor were the 
sole tokens of rule, when the king was the state and 
the people his servants. He gave to the world our 
country, where the only king is Freedom and where 
the People is the State. When under the rule of King 
and Cardinal and Noble the creed of the people was 
the voice of the Conclave, under the oaks of New 
England and the pines of Virginia there arose a thun- 
derous song of a new people who cared not for the 
creed of Conclave, Diet, or Cardinal, and who heeded 
not the command of princes. When the swarthy 



32 Some SovitHern Qxaestions 

Spaniard, in leathern jerkin, found not the Fountain 
of Youth, for us its sweet waters waited lovingly and 
to-day are caressed for our good by the soft airs of our 
South. When Spain's covetous eyes, under casque and 
helmet, failed to find the gold of the West, and by its 
mighty power change human destiny, it was given to 
us to enrich our freedom with its plenitude beyond 
the wealth of kings. He gave us vast rivers on whose 
shores in the one season the fleecy cotton, the yellow 
corn, the golden wheat, the wine and the oil, the fruit 
and the flowers, the seed-time and the harvest, shed 
their glory. He flooded this land with the sunshine 
which on the prairie and beside the mountain kisses 
from the fertile field the grain and the fruit, and from 
His exhaustless plenty He has filled our land with the 
mighty agents of civilization waiting but our touch 
to garner them into the rich treasures of our commerce. 
He kept for this people the play of the lightning and 
imprisoned for us the giant arms of the steam. He has 
planned for us mighty continents and seas and lakes 
and rivers and harbors and capes, by whose power 
we can grasp in our strong hands the Ultima Thule 
of commerce. He strengthened the hands of tyrants 
that people from all countries forsaking their homes 
should give to us their best and their bravest ; and 
He broke to pieces the kings when they would shackle 
the progress and curb the holy aspirations of freedom 
and religion in this newest continent. In all the hoary 
ages He has filled the earth with tyrants and kings 



Intelligence and Property FrancHises 33 

and has laid Africa close to their hands ; yet, for rea- 
sons known only to His wisdom, He has reserved this 
free country as the land where the sigh of the slave 
and the rattle of his chain were more frequent than 
in any since the years began their race. For them He 
made peaceful fields incarnadined with the blood of a 
free people, yet over the carnage He made His Son 
to walk, and after His "Peace, be still," as on the 
troublous waters of Galilee, tenderness touched the 
heart and peace and unity and love passing all un- 
derstanding reigned with the people. Then surely 
His mighty arms are around us and His Providence 
is with us. This thing, which we understand not and 
which our mortal eyes do not fully see, is for the 
ultimate glory of our people. 

Whether this race surrounding us as a cloud, edu- 
cated and strengthened to its full stature through our 
trials and our sorrows, shall, on the shores of the Tan- 
ganyika, raising the sweet songs of praise learned on 
the banks of the Tennessee, the Kanawha, and the 
Mississippi, lead the Dark Continent to the light of 
the brighter day, or whether as our helper here in 
fashioning this newest and best land, is not yet for 
mortal man to know. But, sir, with all my soul, I 
believe that this people has been placed here so as in 
some inscrutable manner to glorify this civilization so 
surely touched with the Master's fingers and so cer- 
tainly fashioned with His hands. Ah, sir, there is no 
despair. The witnesses cannot fail. 

3 



34 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

Again, there is another reason why you should hurry 
the settlement of this franchise system and convert the 
Negro vote into an intelligent one as quickly as pos- 
sible. With the exigencies of national life we, of the 
South, will ourselves shortly need the Negro vote. I 
look for the South to be as anxious to have the Negro 
vote counted as is the North to-day. The Negro vote 
heretofore has been allied to a political organization 
the bulk of whose existence is in the North and West. 
He has been generally opposed to the people among 
whom he lives. This has arisen for several reasons, 
that the Southern people were the people to whom he 
belonged as a slave, and for the further reason that he 
fell into the hands, during Reconstruction days, of those 
who preyed upon his credulity and ignorance and 
made him believe that the Southern people were his 
enemies. These impressions are rapidly losing their 
force and a newer and more intelligent class of Negroes 
is taking the place of the old. It is to me as plain as 
the open day that when the Negro is impressed with 
the idea that the white man of the South will treat 
him as fairly in politics as he does in business, he 
will gradually and surely incline to the support of the 
Southern people. It is inevitable. If this is not the 
case it is against the experience of all of the years. 
The Negro is drawing his living from the South. 
His every relation of life is with the Southern man. His 
existence is tied up with the Southern States. The 
laws generally enacted in the South are predicated 



Intelligence and Property Franchises 35 

upon the idea that the Negro will always vote against 
the Southern white man. This is a mistake. He will 
not. Nothing can be more certain than that he will 
ultimately become entirely affiliated with, and inter- 
ested in, every policy of the Southern man. If the 
Negro does not become in time a good Southern man 
in every fibre of his being, he simply belies universal 
experience and breaks political precedent. When a 
question arises of sectional difierence in the way of 
local policy in this country, as they are sure to arise 
in the Republic's life, you will need the Negro's vote 
and most surely you will get it. This condition is 
arising. It is rapidly coming. The South is no longer 
a great agricultural section, but it is becoming a great 
competitor with the North in all the commercial affairs 
of our national life. You will need every vote you can 
get to sustain your great commercial policies. The 
North will surely experience, as we have already ex- 
perienced, the effect of the solid Negro vote. The 
South, most certainly, will be ultimately insistent that 
the Negro vote be counted. Then let the vote be an 
intelligent vote and let the question be settled and out 
of the way, and the Negro will be on the way to give 
us the assistance we shall certainly need. 

This system will allow a different status of franchise 
in the different States of the Union according to the 
general condition of education and property-holding in 
each State. It will not act upon every State as an in- 
flexible national constitutional provision. In one State, 



S6 Some Southern Questions 

according to the rate of illiteracy and property -holding, 
it will exclude a larger element of the population than 
in another State. In the other State, if there is a dif- 
ferent ratio of illiteracy and property-holding, then a 
fair ratio of the population of that State would be 
touched by its provisions, thus acting fairly and equi- 
tably upon the peculiar conditions of each State. 

There is another and higher aspect of this question 
to be considered. By the ancestral clause in many 
States you pull the white man down, and with an edu- 
cational franchise you push the Negro to the highest 
educational exercise. You place a premium upon the 
ignorance of the white man of the South. You say to 
him that there must be a higher educational basis for 
the Negro, and yet the white man can attain the high- 
est rights of American citizenship and at the same time 
wallow in ignorance. It is a wrong to the white man, 
which will surely bear its fruit. I have not understood 
in my investigation of the Anglo-Saxon that he needs 
to have any handicap put on any other race. 

Mr. Chairman, the franchise system, as it is at pres- 
ent constituted in many of the States in the South, is, 
to say the least, practically the policy of repression. 
Repression has been tried at every age of the world's 
history and always with the same unvarying result 
— utter and tremendous failure. It leads nowhere. It 
raises no man. It demands no education. It holds 
ignorance as dense as ever. It drives away intelli- 
gence. It breeds discontent. It represses any rising 



Intelligence and Property KrancHises 37 

aspiration of the heart. It leaves the land at the end 
of the cycle just as it found it at the beginning. It is 
the policy of deadly inaction overridden by discontent. 
It has filled the rich empire of Russia with the nihilist 
and the anarchist, where your brother is a spy upon 
your life and the highest ofl&cial of the court touches 
arms with the serf to plot destruction to the govern- 
ment. It has gangrened and filled beautiful Ireland 
with seething discontent. In every country the sys- 
tem has borne the same terrible results. In our coun- 
try, where every man, white and black, feels that he 
has the right to equal law, under such a system the 
effect is increased a thousand-fold. Only the other day 
I stood in the little room where the mighty spirit of 
Stonewall Jackson wrestled in its last conflict with the 
Great Ruler. The scene which occurred there in the 
old troublous days arose to my mind. With his life- 
blood ebbing, his thoughts were still on the battle-field 
in the conflict for his beloved country. As his immortal 
spirit left his body, those aroimd him were thrilled by 
his last commands here on earth : ' ' General, you must 
keep your men together and hold your ground ! ' ' My 
fellow-countrymen, under this system, can you hold 
the glory and the civilization of the South together ? 
I ask you who believe in exact justice, in representa- 
tive government, can you under the present system 
hold your ground ? Would the kindly eyes under the 
old worn hat countenance the continuance of the sys- 
tem of political government where, even if it was once 



38 Some SovatHern Questions 

necessary, that necessity in the change of affairs in 
this Republic has long since departed? The answer 
coming from every true patriot and far-seeing man of 
the South is, there is but one way for the South to 
keep our men together and hold our ground, and that 
is behind a fair, honest, and equitable system bearing 
alike upon every one. 

Is not this course demanded by the plainest dictates 
of prudence ? Does it not appeal to the most elemental 
principles of foresight ? We have the alternative plainly 
presented to us. Place the franchise on a fair and wise 
and permanent basis or leave it in its present condition 
of unrest. Which is best for the South ? Which plan 
does true patriotism prescribe ? Which appeals to 
statesmanship and which appeals to the hour ? The 
train of evils waiting on the present condition is too 
apparent for controversy. The open demand in high 
places for the absolute disfranchisement of the Negro, 
leaving ten millions of people without hope in the midst 
of our nation ; the argument presented for the repeal 
of the Fifteenth Amendment, which would again rend 
in twain this great nation ; the natural discontent re- 
sulting from the growing intelligence of the Negro ; 
the reiterated resolutions presented to Congress unfairly 
representing us to the world of commerce and justice ; 
the demand for the reduction of our representation, 
are all practical results of the unsettled condition of 
our franchise. What do we gain by delay ? Nothing. 
We will only miss our opportunity to grasp the decisive 



Intelligence and Property FrancHises 39 

moment for action, and with the opening of the new 
era of industrial change to reorganize our franchise 
system. When it begins and is under way, it is too 
late. 

" New times, new climes, new lands, new men, but still 
The same old tears, old wrongs, and oldest ill." 

Shall we longer wait ? Is not the fair settlement of 
this question in the manner I have indicated far wiser 
than any attempt to repeal or modify the Fifteenth 
Amendment, which has been so ably pressed by a re- 
spected member of this Conference ? Will you allow 
me an additional moment to oppose, with all the ear- 
nestness of my life, this last proposition ? At the risk 
of overtaxing your indulgence, I beg your further at- 
tention. This proposition is too powerfully and seduc- 
tively urged by my friend, Dr. Murphy, to be passed 
in silence. We are striving to close the gulf between 
the two great sections. This demand would again 
open wide the bitterness of the olden days. It would 
say to the North, as Abraham of old said to I^ot : 
* ' Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt 
take the left hand, then I will go to the right ; but if 
thou wilt depart to the right hand, then I will go to 
the left. ' ' It would be a step backward. It would be 
practically a revolution. It would loose from its moor- 
ings the crystallized sentiment of a third of a century. 
It would practically again raise the issues of the war. It 
could result only in evil by agitation, for it could never 



40 Some So\itKern Qviestions 

be accomplished. It would require the affirmative 
vote of the majority of the I^egislatures of three-fourths 
of the States to repeal the amendment. It would re- 
quire two-thirds of the vote of the Senate of the United 
States and the House of Representatives. The majority 
of one branch of the I,egislature of only twelve States 
can defeat its modification or repeal. One-third vote 
in the House or Senate would defeat the repeal. No 
human right in all the histor}^ of government is so 
absolutely guaranteed as the rights under the Amend- 
ments to the Constitution. The practical effect of the 
repeal would be to wrest from the South a portion of 
our representation, which we could not consider in 
this day of industrial progress and need. 

Sir, there is a higher reason than the loss of repre- 
sentation. The repeal or modification of the Fifteenth 
Amendment means the practical turning over to the 
South of the Negro Question as a local question. Are 
we able to bear it ? Is not the question of the political 
status of ten millions of a different race, living amidst 
us, burden sufficient for the whole nation, which can 
only be settled, under the providence of the Almighty, 
by the earnest, hearty, and loving co-operation of the 
North and South ? This action would, as nothing else, 
destroy that kindly co-operation. 

With all our strength and pride, is not the burden 
too great for us alone to bear ? We have trodden the 
winepress so long and our feet are worn with the weary 
round of the threshing-floor. I know that it is fashion- 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 41 

able to say: " Hands oflf ! the South will settle its race 
troubles in its own way ! " It seems to me that those 
who echo this cry know not what they say and do not 
understand the burden which they would impose upon 
our strength, and surely the love of our reunited coun- 
try has not j-et flooded their hearts with its tender 
beauty and power. It is true that the fructification of 
our hopes seems almost a dream touched with the 
radiance of the glory of that Blessed I^and where alone 
the sunshine is brighter and the day more translucent 
than that which illumines and glorifies our own South. 
It is true that with a robe radiant and gorgeous with 
the waving grain, the fragrant hemp, the snowy cot- 
ton, and the ripened grape, we have clothed the naked- 
ness of the dear old land. We have filled the desolate 
places with laughter and happiness and plenty, and 
with the sweet alchemy of the passing years as our 
gentle handmaiden, have poured the healing nepenthe 
upon the broken heart. Amid the fatness of our fields 
and beside our rivers, whose waters, like the minor 
strains of sad music, incessantly voice hallowed associa- 
tions, and whose shores are redolent with the mem- 
ories of sorrows endured and trials overcome, we are 
again erecting a majestic civilization. Yet, notwith- 
standing this glory of our labor, do we not need all of 
the tender sympathy and loving interest and wise 
counsel which our brother of the North holds out to 
us with an open hand and a generous heart ? This is 
the question in the economy of our governmental life 



42 Some SovitKern Qxiestions 

•which cannot be local. Its settlement concerns all of 
the country, North and South alike. The South more 
immediately and acutely, it is true, but equally in its 
far-reaching consequences it touches all the people. It 
should not be left to the South to work it out alone 
and unaided. I am as insistent as any son of the 
South can be upon our supreme right to settle in our 
own way our social aflfairs, and I insist that in our social 
and racial treatment of the question our hands should 
be free to fend as meets our need. That aspect is local 
and personal. However, upon the great question of 
its final settlement in its national aspect, it will take 
all of the united wisdom and resources of the whole 
people. Why should not this supreme question have 
the undivided labor of our reunited and loving people, 
rendered almost omnipotent in the grandeur of its 
accomplishment, because the endeavor is crowned and 
glorified by the Brotherhood which, with each fading 
sunset, grows sweeter and dearer as the sullen crimson 
lights of the sad past 

'* Tinge the sober twilight of the Present 
With color of romance " ? 

Well remembering what in our nakedness and empti- 
ness we have accomplished in the settlement of the 
Race Question, yet I make obeisance to those of 
the North who by their assistance have rendered it 
possible for the South to have accomplished so much. 
With all my soul I plead that with us no narrow spirit 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 43 

of sufficiency or suspicion of untoward interference on 
the part of the North should prevent the intertwining 
of our lives and our energies in the unravelling of the 
complexities of a situation which more vitally aflfects 
modem civilization than any question of the present 
day. For us to do so was for Theseus to refuse the 
sword of Ariadne, and to cast aside the skein of silk 
proffered by the loving hand of the daughter of Minos. 
A follower of Him, the latchet of whose shoe we are 
not worthy to loose, relates that on one of the carnage- 
stricken fields of old Virginia an officer of a Massachu- 
setts regiment lay wounded to death. His regiment 
had passed on leaving him alone with the fading light 
and amid the quickly-coming shadows. He was lying 
in the line of the march of the Southern troops, and as 
a Southern soldier hurried by he called and asked 
him to pray with him. "Oh, I am sorry I cannot," 
he said ; " I have never learned to pray for myself." 
Yet with soft hands and tender sympathy he placed 
the dying officer under the grateful shade, pillowed 
his head, and cooling his fevered lips with water from 
his canteen, he left him with words of cheer and hur- 
ried away to the battle-field. Soon the ears almost in 
hearing of the majestic music of that better land and 
rendered doubly acute by its near approach, again 
heard coming footsteps, and as another Southern 
soldier passed by the pleading lips called out, "I beg 
you to come and pray with me." Seeing the dim- 
ming eyes and the broken form, the Southern soldier 



44 Some SovitHern Questions 

knelt down beside his erstwhile foeman and poured 
over that battle-stricken field his prayer for the guid- 
ance of one about entering the encircling shadows, and 
for the sweet and divine consolation of those dear ones 
he had left at home. As the man of the South prayed, 
there came to the wistful, fast-closing eyes a vision of 
the homestead in the North, with the old mother look- 
ing down the flower-bordered lane and listening for 
footsteps too long in their returning ; the well, with 
its sweet water, under the shadow of the waving elms ; 
the sweet meadow, with its fragrance of newly-cut 
grass and flowers ; the children at their little play ; 
the evening table and the vacant chair, and the sweet- 
faced waiting wife with the little one in her arms ; 
and with each supplication and sweet reminder of life 
and loved ones and of the nearer and other life, the 
weakening arms, clothed in their uniform of blue, 
wrapped themselves around the gray-clad soldier. 
Nearer and nearer crept the wounded form in blue, 
and as the last tender supplication went out to the 
Throne from the lips of the Southerner, the spirit of 
the soldier of the North went on its journey and left 
its mortality, holding in close embrace the gray-clad 
soldier of the South. 

And here, my countrymen, in this splendid pres- 
ence, I invoke, as a touchstone to our lives and a 
guide to our feet, often wandering, that spirit of unity 
of love and action which touched the battle-fields with 
the tenderness of unseen hands and gave amidst the 



Intelligence and Property FrancKises 45 

lonely pines of old Virginia a foretaste of the spirit of 
better days yet to come. 

Then, sir, let us approach this supremest question 
of our civil life with hearts touching and arms about 
each other and strengthened by a consecrated union 
of purpose and interest, and we will, as conquerors, 
ascend those imperial heights of self-abnegation, 
patriotism, and true statesmanship, where amidst the 
blooming of sweet flowers of love and perfect trust we 
will contemplate a happy people undivided by inter- 
necine conflict and unshaken by sectional difierence. 
Yea, we will not approach this question with broken 
bodies clothed with the blue and the gray, and over 
fields strewn with the ruck of a despairing civiliza- 
tion, tinged with the dun colors of sectional conflict 
and difference ; but rather as brothers whose endeavor 
is illumined by the golden sunlight encompassing the 
rich cities, the fields abounding with fertility, the ad- 
vancing commerce and civil glory of a united people. 
Conscious of the ultimate rectitude of an enlightened 
nation and touched with the spirit of Him who taught 
as never man taught the unchangeable principles of 
right and justice to all men of every condition, we 
together, the North and the South, will work out to 
its finality this great problem, in love, in justice, and 
in moderation, to the glory of our civilization, and 
leave to our children's children the priceless illustra- 
tion of a people forgetting the sorrows and hatreds of 
other days, surrendering sectional advantage, doing 



46 Some SovitHem Questions 

equal justice to everj' man of every color and condi- 
tion, and resolutely turning the face to a day of wider 
and better and brighter and more glorious national 
life which will hasten the time when justice will be 
the delight of our people and the chiefest glory of our 
free government ! 



II 

THE RACK QUESTION 

THE question which we have for consideration 
to-day is the Negro Question in its relation to 
the practical affairs of the South. Discussing 
the Negro from a practical standpoint, you must discuss 
the settlement of the Race Question. With the Race 
Question on its way to settlement, the practical evolution 
will quickly come. As soon as it is understood that 
this question is of the past, then will immedi- 
ately begin the industrial evolution of the South. 
What we want is a practical and final method of 
settlement of the question as between the two races. 
When that is determined, there is no question as to the 
South, with its wonderftd natural advantages, taking 
care of the whole practical question. That being my 
view, I propose to discuss the best plan of finally de- 
termining the Race Question. With the South unham- 
pered by this great question, there will be no trouble 
about the mills and the manufactories and the indus- 
trial affairs of the South. 

To the practical men who desire the upbuilding of 
the South, the time has come to speak plainly and 
honestly. The Race Question, however, is no longer 

47 



48 Some SovitKern Questions 

a question of the South. It is a question of the whole 
country, and it is affecting the whole body politic. As 
a matter of material interest, the greatest outlay of 
money within ten years in this country has been 
made in the South. This is largely Northern money. 
The greatest development of the nation's prosperity, 
naturally speaking, within ten years has been in the 
South. The South is no longer industrially a back- 
door, no longer a terra incognita. With one exception, 
the finest developments of iron ore are in the South, 
and the largest body of hardwood timber is in the 
South. One State in the South has more coal than 
Pennsylvania and Ohio combined. One State in the 
South is to-day exceeding Pennsylvania in the produc- 
tion of oil ; one Southern State is the second coke 
producer, and it ranks third in the production of coal. 
There is more water-power in one State in the South 
than there is in the whole of New England. In her 
ability to manufacture cheap textiles, she has no 
competitor. In every branch of natural mercantile 
supremacy she is easily the first. 

The race of trade and of civilization is to-day in- 
exorable, and the cheapest and best will win in the 
industrial warfare. The West is teeming with popula- 
tion. It is largely agricultural in its nature. The 
South, unlike the West, affords a varied field for agri- 
cultural, mineral, and manufacturing development. 
The North, with the quick intuition of trade, under- 
stands this, and to-day it is concerned in the South, 



TKe Race Qxiestion 49 

not alone from a question of patriotism for the whole 
country, but also from the fact that millions of North- 
ern money have been poured into the South, and the 
sons and daughters of the North are with us as part 
and parcel of our political, economic, and social exist- 
ence. Therefore, I say that the North from a mere 
practical standpoint is interested as well as the South 
in all of the complexities of the Race Question. 

As to actual development in the South I will be 
pardoned for a moment. Within ten years, the greatest 
number of railroads have been developed in the South. 
Within ten years, more mills and factories have been 
erected in the South than in any other part of the 
country. Within ten years, more cities have been 
founded and more towns have grown into great cities 
than in any other part of the United States. Within 
ten years, there has been a greater change of immigra- 
tion towards the South than towards any other part of 
the United States. So I reiterate, that it is a national 
question that we are confronting. What are we to 
do about it ? With the great practical genius of the 
American people, there is no question about our ability 
to grapple with it. Let us not refine. Let us discuss 
the question plainly, yet with mutual and decent for- 
bearance both for the white and for the black and for 
the North and for the South. 

In the first place, we must disabuse the mind in each 
section of the prejudice which surrounds the Race Ques- 
tion. I speak as a Southern man who springs from two 



50 Some SoxitKern Qxiestions 

hundred years of Southern ancestry, and am naturally 
filled with the prejudice of the South. The Southern 
men generally believe that the enfranchisement of slaves 
at the Reconstruction period was entirely from hate, 
viciousness, and revenge on the part of the Northern 
people. A great many of the Northern people have 
the idea that the whole object of the Southern man is 
to nullify the post-bellum amendments to the Constitu- 
tion and practically to re-enslave the black ; that there 
was no great or salient question of race instinct or race 
supremacy, and that the Southern man's treatment of 
the Negro after the war was intended as an insult to 
the North ; that the Ku-Klux plan was purely for re- 
venge and wanton spirit and not for protection. Now, 
as a matter of fact, neither one of these propositions is 
correct, A majority of the Northern people in their 
idea of reconstruction were honest, and their desire for 
the complete emancipation of the slaves was the influ- 
ence behind them. To some extent there was a vast 
deal of narrowness and ignorance among the Northern 
people, but as a Southern man I do not believe that the 
horrors of reconstruction were for the mere purpose of 
revenge or viciousness on the part of the Northern 
people. A great number of the political leaders, mis- 
informing and misleading the Northern people, were 
largely responsible for these wrongs ; but I do not be- 
lieve that the mass of the people in the North intended 
to wantonly injure and degrade the South. 

On the other hand, the Southern man was confronted 



TKe Race Qviestion 51 

with the most gigantic problem that had ever fallen to 
a people. With an ignorant, superstitious, and alien 
race in absolute control of his home, holding control of 
his State government, directing the affairs of his city, 
wrecking and looting the State, devastating the fields, 
destroying the schools, and asserting itself ignorantly in 
all of the affairs of the State, he was naturally restive, 
and did things which to the Northern eye and to the 
Northern mind were not demanded by the circumstance 
of the situation . To the credit of both North and South , 
however, the situation is daily being better understood. 
In the North they are beginning to understand that 
there is a great question which concerns both sections, 
the South, more nearly, because the South is the seat 
of the trouble. The South, on its side, has gotten its 
bearings, laid out its ground, and is more thoroughly 
understanding the situation and how to deal with it. 
Therefore, there is before us an actual question of vast 
moment, and it is our duty as honest men to give it 
the best consideration of our lives, so that it may be 
settled for the glorj^ of this great civilization. Many 
methods have been suggested of settling the question. 
Much has been written and said upon the subject. We 
will take each proposed remedy and discuss it separately. 
What are they ? 

1. Colonization, domestic and foreign. 

2. Diffusion. 

3. Absorption or Amalgamation. 

To some extent I ask to be pardoned for a discussion 



52 Some SoiatHern Q\iestions 

of these general plans. I do so for the reason that as 
quickly as possible the whole of the country should be 
united upon one conservative plan for the settlement of 
the Race Question. I do not propose to go into detail. 
It will no doubt be disappointing that I discuss this 
question in the manner I propose, but in my judgment 
every plan should be thoroughly discussed in order that 
the best one may obtain. Dissipation of ideas is the 
destruction of our purpose, and it has heretofore largely 
impeded progress in the practical affairs of the South. 
Numbers of honest, zealous, and sincere men working 
upon different plans have accomplished very little, and 
it is our duty, if at all possible, to combine our theories 
into a practical unity of plan. When we settle upon a 
plan as an absolute finality, and all work along those 
lines, wonders will result. To accomplish this by 
honest and plain statements seems to be the best. Let 
us see what are the weak points of the general plan of 
this settlement of the question. When the acute stage 
is passed, the practical will immediately appear. When 
the mind has become settled, the whole body politic 
can go to work, and thus material advancement will be 
the immediate result. I base my whole argument upon 
the idea that in the South the Negro will live. He is 
here to stay. We had just as well make up our 
minds to that effect. A number of intelligent peo- 
ple, backed by powerful sentimental influence, look 
to colonization as the best settlement. It is the 
oldest idea, and one upon which vasts sums of 



THe Race Qiaestion 53 

money have been spent. Is it practicable? Let us 
consider it. 

First we will take the question of domestic coloniza- 
tion, which means, in the language of one of its greatest 
disciples, "the purchasing or procuring of a territory 
within our limits, erecting it into a statehood and plac- 
ing thereon all of the colored population of the United 
States. ' ' This is a dream of the brighest colors, yet but 
a dream. This plan of late has many and eminent 
followers in this country. The carrying out of the 
statehood plan involves the settlement of greater ques- 
tions than confront us in the Race Question. 

First consider the question of property. The Negro 
of the South owns three hundred and fifty thousand 
farms and homes without incumbrance. He is paying 
taxes on four hundred million dollars' worth of prop- 
erty. He has great possessions in churches, schools, 
and colleges. In a thousand ways he is intermingled 
in the vast rights of innumerable business affairs. 

With either foreign or domestic colonization, how 
are you going to get rid of the Negro's property. Sell 
it ? Confiscate it ? Force him to sell it ? Nay, verily. 
To do so you have to change the Constitution of the 
United States and also of the States in which the Negro 
largely lives. He is under the protection of the 
Constitutions, National and State. Under the Consti- 
tution of the United States, you cannot interfere with 
his status except for crime. The men generally who 
propose the exportation of the Negro for the reason 



54 Some SoxitKern Questions 

that his civil and political status is not recognized in 
the South, are in favor of taking him without his con- 
sent, absolutely destroying his civil status, and remov- 
ing him from his home and placing him in another 
habitation. Speaking practically, how are the state- 
hood dreamers going to get rid of the law of the land, 
which protects every citizen of this Republic in his 
home, his liberty, and his country ? Plainly speaking, 
to carry out the plan means the forcible abduction of 
the Negro race. To leave it to their consent means 
that the vast majority will not consent to go, and thus 
the question is not solved. The question teems with 
difficulties beside which the Race Question is but small. 
Again, the view of one of the greatest exponents of 
this idea is to take part of what is known as the arid 
regions of this country and place thereon the Negro. 
To be perfectly frank, I think that after the two cen- 
turies of vassalage of the Negro, after the wrongs which 
have been committed upon him, to take him away from 
his vine and fig-tree, and place him in the arid region 
of the country would be as great a crime as our en- 
slaving him. Another proposition. There are in this 
country practically nine millions of Negroes. This is 
a vast number. How could we erect that number into 
a statehood ? I<et us consider a moment. The most 
populous State we have is New York State. It has a 
little upwards of six millions of people. The next in 
population is Pennsylvania with upwards of five millions 
of people. The State of New York has an area of 



THe Race Question 55 

49,000 square miles. The State of Pennsylvania lias 
45,000 square miles. Here are two congested States in 
whose borders the whole civilization of this country- 
has had full play for two centuries, yet there 
are in these two great States but few more than 
one-half the number of people than there are negroes 
in the whole country. I will ask some one who 
believes in the separate statehood of the Negroes 
to show us where this extent of territory could be 
procured. The Northwestern States, in Oregon, 
Utah, Nebraska, Dakota? From an economic stand- 
point it is well known that the Negro could not 
live in this, to him, inhospitable region. He is a 
creature of the South, and alone in the South can 
he live. Then, again, how will you procure the terri- 
tory of the State in which he is to live? By recon- 
struction? By the destruction of one State and the 
reconstruction of another? By dismembering sover- 
eignty ? Consider for a moment the constitutional 
limitations of our country. Will any State consent to 
be dismembered in order that a population necessarily 
ignorant and inferior shall be placed within its limits? 
The only method by which you could dismember a State 
would be with the consent of the people within the 
State. What State in the Union would consider for a 
moment its dismemberment in order that it might be 
created into separate statehood for the Negro? The 
question is greater than the Race Question. Again, 
the scheme of domestic colonization means that the 



$6 Some SovitHern Qviestions 

Negroes shall alone inhabit the State. How will you 
rid the State to be taken of the citizens who have carved 
its statehood out of the wilderness and who have 
planted their own civilization within its borders ? By 
the right of eminent domain, forsooth! If that is done, 
we must change the Constitution. Are we willing to 
submit ourselves to the throes of other amendments to 
the Constitution for the settlement of this question? 
It would produce a greater rocking of the State than 
the Reconstruction Acts. Then the idea seems to be 
to place the Negro by himself in his own territory and 
under his own control. The best men in the North 
and in the South who have considered this subject 
believe that it is not right that the American nation 
should turn the Negro race over to itself at this period 
of its evolution. In my judgment, the Negro is not 
ready to be left to himself. It is the duty of the people 
who brought him here to stand by him and help him 
in the evolution of this great race problem. Gentle- 
men, how long, with the fecundity of the Negro race, 
would his increase be confined within the borders of 
his State ? How long before the government would be 
called upon to purchase other States for him in the 
natural order of increase ? 

Another suggestion : How would it be possible to 
keep the white man out and the Negro in ? The bor- 
ders of the Negro State would have to be surrounded 
by the musket and the bayonet. Then take the politi- 
cal question. Those who are in favor of this segrega- 



THe Race Qviestion 57 

tion of the Negro seem to be largely in favor of the 
proposition by reason of his loss of political rights in 
the South. Pray tell me what political rights and 
power would he have, representing one State in the 
whole sisterhood of States ? That State would prac- 
tically be an alien State. What power would he have 
for improvement? What ability would he have to 
obtain from the National Government the recognition 
which his numbers would ordinarily demand ? When 
he is situated among the white race, that which the 
white race receives from the Government is divided 
with him. Situated as he would be in his own State 
and by himself, it would be practically nine millions of 
black people confronted by seventy millions of white 
people, and he would receive nothing of the recognition 
which he receives to-day. Then the expense, if you 
would consider the question of expense of the exodus 
of nine millions of people. In all the history of the 
moving of nations, such an exodus as this has never 
been accomplished. 

Let us discuss foreign colonization^ 

ist. As I have before said, how will you get the 
consent of the American Negro to his deportation to a 
foreign land? He is a citizen, and without his consent 
you cannot take away his rights. Consider a moment 
the question of expense. It would at the lowest esti- 
mate cost in mere transportation more than five hundred 
millions of dollars, with at least a similar amount to 
prepare him to go and to sustain him for a time when 



S8 Some SoutHern Questions 

there. It would take at least thirty years to a half a 
century in time. To settle the machinery of the move- 
ment would take longer than the settlement of the 
Race Question by rational methods within our own 
country. Again, the great religious and philanthropic 
sense of the great American nation would revolt against 
the deportation of nine millions of Negroes to Central 
America or to Africa. Practically, with few exceptions, 
it would mean, in their present state of social and eco- 
nomic development, the turning back to the barbarism 
of Africa, which is too revolting for discussion, and the 
Southern people, upon whom to-day falls the greatest 
burden of the race, who are to-day the greatest sufferers 
from the racial question, would not permit it. The 
North would not consent. It would be such a crime 
that the crime of slavery would pale into insignificance 
thereby. Many men suggest acquiring by treaty or 
purchase territory in South or Central America and 
thereon locating the Negro. In the first place, I do 
not believe that any government, even among the 
wretched, mixed, dictator-ridden states of Central 
America would permit us to unload on them our bur- 
den. There will also come the great question of pro- 
tecting the purchased state, and there will arise all of 
the complications of our relation to its government, 
and with it all the endless questions springing from the 
government of the mongrel state among the nations 
of South America. 

I have heard it stated by respectable authorities that 



i 



XHe R.ace Qxiestion 59 

many Negroes are clamoring to be exported to Africa. 
I live among the Negroes, and to my oft-repeated 
question as to whether they would be willing to go, I 
have not as yet gotten from one intelligent Negro an 
affirmative answer. 

It would seem to me that the non-partisan statement 
of the Educational Bureau of the United States would 
be sufficient evidence to do away with the question of 
massing the Negroes either in foreign colonization or 
in domestic statehood. Says the able Commissioner : 
" In educational and in industrial progress this race 
has accomplished more than it could have achieved if 
settled in different environments without the aid of the 
whites. The Negro has needed the experience as well 
as the aid of the white man. In sections where the 
colored race has been massed and removed from con- 
tact with the whites, the progress of the Negro has 
been retarded. He is an imitative being, and has a 
constant desire to attempt whatever he sees the white 
man do. He believes in the education of his children, 
because he can see that an increase of knowledge 
will enable them to better their condition. The 
Bureau shows that in States where the colored pop- 
ulation is highest in proportion to the total population, 
or where such population is massed in the ' Black 
Belt,' as in South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, 
and Louisiana, there the per cent, of illiteracy is 
highest." 

I would suggest that this reason alone would be 



6o Some SovitKern Qviestions 

potent in settling the Race Question by sending the 
Negro to himself to live in his own ignorance. 

In addition to the crime of removal, I repeat that 
the Negro sent back into Africa in his present state of 
evolution would simply mean a relapse in his status 
of civilization. I do not mention this as a case of race 
inferiority. I do not mean to include in this statement 
all of the race. There are Negroes who have reached 
a high degree of intellectuality, but I say in all frank- 
ness to send the Negro back to Africa in his present 
condition would be the crime of the world. The ex- 
periment has been tried and it is a horrible failure. In 
the West Indies and in lyiberia we have had examples 
of what many friends of the Negro race — among others, 
my distinguished and able friend, the Senator from 
North Carolina — are insisting should be done with the 
American Negro. "With no intention of depreciating 
the Negro's ability for self-government, but two exam- 
ples are sufficient. Take I,iberia, upon which state 
there has been poured millions of dollars by the friends 
of the Negro ; where the highest statesmanship has 
provided him with a government and a habitation. 
Here we find a dreadful failure. Says the late minister 
to lyiberia, an intelligent man : 

" They have no money or currency in circulation of 
any kind. They have no boats of any character, not 
even a canoe. The two gunboats England gave them 
lie rotten on the beach. They have no guns or swords 
in working condition, nor even a cannon to fire a salute, 



XKe Race Qxiestion 6i 

though they purchased at one time 47,000 dollars' 
worth of guns from the United States. 

" There are only four post-offices in the country, one 
for each of the four counties. The government has no 
harbor, wharf, or breakwaters for steamers to land at. 
The next morning I looked for manufactories, mills, 
shops, artisan establishments of some kind, furnishing 
employment to the masses. Not one of any description 
could be found. I enquired for a hotel. They told me 
that there was none. No tailor-shop, no blacksmith 
to make a nail, no tinner to make a cup, no jeweller to 
set your watch ; nothing to amuse you, nothing to 
engage your time, nothing to keep j'ou in earnest, 
lyook from morning till night, and you will never see 
a horse, a mule, a donkey, or oxen. They have none. 
There is not a buggy, a wagon, a cart of any kind, or a 
wheelbarrow in the four counties. The natives carry 
everything on their heads. . . . There are one 
hundred nude persons to every one wearing clothes. 
They have no statute against indecent exposure. . . . 
The government contains no public schools of any 
kind. The missionary schools teach the natives' chil- 
dren exclusively, when the people in this country and 
in England have expended in Iviberia for education and 
improvement near $7,000,000. If everything in Liberia 
was sold excepting the individuals, not more than 
$1 ,000,000 could be realized. The Colonization Society 
claims to have aided 22,000 civilized Negroes to go to 



62 Some SovitHern Qviestions 

Liberia since they first went there in 1822. To-day, in 
the whole of I^iberia, in a population, native and civil- 
ized, of fully 1,000,000, only 12,000 can be said to be 
civilized." 

Take our own continent, and a glance at the island 
of San Domingo shows a similar condition of afiairs 
in that beautiful island, when left to the absolute 
control of the Negro race in its present system of evolu- 
tion. I quote from Mr. Froude's book, The English in 
the West Indies. 

" St. Domingo, of which Hayti is the largest division, 
was the earliest island discovered by Columbus, and the 
finest in the Carribean Ocean. The Spaniards found 
there a million or two of mild and innocent Indians, 
whom they converted ofi'the face of the earth — working 
them to death in their mines and plantations. They 
filled their places with blacks from Africa. They 
colonized ; they built cities ; they throve and prospered 
for nearly two hundred years, when Hayti was taken 
from them and made a French province. The French 
kept it till the revolution. They built towns ; they 
laid out farms and sugar fields ; they planted coffee all 
over the island, where it now grows wild. Vast herds 
of cattle roamed over the mountains ; splendid houses 
rose over the rich savannahs. The French church 
put out its strength ; there were churches and preachers 
in every parish. So firm was the hold that they had 
gained, that Hayti, like Cuba, seemed to have been 
made a part of the old world, and as civilized as France 



XKe Race Qviestion 63 

herself. The revolution came, and the reign of liberty. 
The blacks took arms ; they surprised the plantations ; 
they made a clean sweep of the whole French popula- 
tion. The island being thus derelict, Spain and Eng- 
land both tried their hand to recover it, but failed, and 
a black nation, with a republican constitution, and a 
population perhaps of about one million and a half of 
pure blood Negroes, has since been in unchallenged 
possession, and has arrived at the condition which has 
been described to us by Sir Spencer St. John. 

" Morals in the technical sense they have none ; but 
they cannot be said to sin, because they have no know- 
ledge of a law. They are naked and not ashamed. 
They sin ; but they sin only as animals, without shame, 
because there is no sense of doing wrong. In fact, 
those poor children of darkness have escaped the 
consequences of the fall, and must have come of 
another stock after all. Immorality is so universal 
that it almost ceases to be a fault . . . it is the 
rule. In spite of schools and missionaries, seventy per 
cent, of the children now born among them are illegiti- 
mate. Young people make experiment of one another 
before they will enter into any closer connection. So 
far they are no worse than our own English islands, 
where the custom is equally general ; but behind the 
religiosity, there lies as active and alive the horrible 
revival of the West African superstitions ; the serpent 
worship, and the child sacrifice, and the cannibalism. 
The facts are notorious. . . , A few years ago, persons 



64 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

guilty of these infamies were tried and punished ; now 
they are left alone, because to prosecute and convict 
them would be to acknowledge the truth of the 
indictment. 

" The blacks as long as they were slaves were docile 
and partly civilized . . . but the effect of leaving the 
Negro nature to itself is apparent at last. There is no 
sign, not the slightest, that the generality of the race 
are improving either in intelligence or moral habits ; 
all of the evidence is the other way. The generality 
are mere good-natured animals. The customs of Da- 
homey have not yet shown themselves in the English 
West Indies, and never can while the English authority 
is maintained ; but no custom of any kind will be 
found in a Negro hut or village from which his most 
sanguine friend can derive a hope that he is on the way 
to mending himself. Ninety years of Negro self-gov- 
ernment have had their use in showing what it really 
means. The movement is backward, not forward." 

I am sorry to make these quotations, but I am mak- 
ing in this address a plain statement of facts and am 
not dealing with sentiment. We are discussing the 
facts without regard to sentiment, and I believe that 
when the facts are well understood the intelligence and 
philanthrophy of the American people will not support 
a very large and intelligent class of people who believe 
that colonization is the settlement of this question. 
Mark you, I do not make this quotation for the purpose 
of showing that the Negro race cannot rise to a high 



TKe Race Qviestion 65 

degree of civilization. I believe that with the right 
guidance it will be one of the factors in the world's 
affairs. 

Now arises the kindred question. If you do not col- 
onize these people how will you save the country from 
their natural increase ? Will they not overwhelm and 
become the dominant race, thus displacing the Anglo- 
Saxon civilization ? This argument is often heard and 
often believed. Many people are of the opinion that 
the Negro from mere natural increase will become the 
dominant race factor in the South. The statistics do 
not bear out this fear of a great relative increase of the 
Negro. I do not believe that this danger threatens us. 
Further than this every indication points to the fact 
that the Gulf of Mexico will be an American sea, that 
we will practically have control of the islands of the 
Gulf of Mexico. This seems to me our ultimate destiny. 
Every condition of business foresight, commercial and 
military strategy, seems to point in that direction . Since 
the events of the last year I am more impressed by the 
suggestion that in addition to Cuba and Porto Rico we 
should have under our control Hayli and San Domingo. 
Many of the educated blacks of this country will then 
naturally turn to these islands where their labor in every 
sphere is at a premium, and where they can live better 
and easier and be more efficient than in any other part 
of the world, excepting Africa. Numbers of them in 
time will naturally go to the southern islands, where by 
reason of their natural condition they will be of vast 

5 



66 Some SovitHern Q\iestions 

use in the work of regenerating the rich islands of the 
southern seas. I further believe that the nations under 
the providence of God are working out in Africa the 
destiny of the African race. At the present state of his 
intelligence the Negro cannot, unaided and alone, 
contend with the diflSculties of African settlement and 
colonization. He cannot plan by himself, but Africa 
is being developed under the immediate control of the 
white race, who are building railroads into those regions 
and who are supervising its evolution from barbarism 
and savagery to civilization. This is being done by 
nations powerful from a military and commercial stand- 
point, and who are able to afford the protection and 
pay the money to do the vast work. Here will be one 
of the great fields and one of the homes of the civilized 
African race. Not being forced or deported thousands 
of them will go back and assist the nations of the earth 
in the development of their people. 

The great nations which are at the present develop- 
ing Africa will have need for exactly the people whom 
we are educating upon the American soil at this 
time, and I believe that many will find congenial work 
in developing the great African Continent. This 
does not militate against my view of en masse coloniza- 
tion. One is forced,the other is natural and symmetrical 
and comes when the people who are able to do the 
work are fit for the labor which is set before them. 
They will not be turned loose in the wilds of Africa, 
but will go there under the superior organizing ability 



TKe IVace Question 67 

of the white man to work out the destiny of the Negro 
race. I believe numbers of them will go to the African 
Continent, but here in the South will be the home of 
the great body of the race and the questions must be 
worked out with that cardinal principle always in view. 
Another sure and certain relief from the over-burden 
of a large colored population will come by reason of 
the unprecedented commercial and manufacturing 
growth of the South. This will to a great extent restore 
the numerical relation between the two races in the 
South. If the same condition of commercial activity 
continues in the South within the next ten years as has 
been witnessed in the last ten years, vast numbers of 
manufactories of all kinds, in all of the various industries 
of iron and wood, marble, steel, and of the textiles, will 
herein have their place. This will cause cities to grow, 
manufactories to rise, and will bring about all of the ac- 
tive commercial environments of the Northern manufac- 
turer. This will surely carry with it the influx of a large 
and active white population which will act as a balance to 
the present congestion of the Negro race. The present 
limits of the " Black Belt " would easily allow to live 
within it a population as large as the population of the 
United States, and the race conditions would be entirely 
reversed. Under the theories which I have advanced 
as to the predominance of the white and at the present 
time more intelligent person, the Race Question would 
be put in the background. In addition to this, the 
presence of an active, energetic, manufacturing, white 



68 Some SoutHern Questions 

citizenship would bring about a great solving of the 
question, in that it would have a vast effect upon the 
intelligence of the weaker race. We do not fear the in- 
telligent black man. It is the ignorant member of his 
race who is troublesome. 

I will say just here that it has been shown by the 
most careful researches that there is not the great 
danger in the increase of the Negroes as has heretofore 
been supposed. The Senator from Massachusetts, when 
he speaks of fifty millions of Negroes in the Southern 
country within a generation, is entirely out of plumb 
with the facts. The Negro in proportion to the white 
man shows a diminished increase in numbers. It ap- 
pears from the most accurate census tables that a century 
ago the population of the South was made up of whites 
and Negroes in the proportion of 65 and 35 per cent. , 
and that, in 1890, the proportion was 69 and 31 per 
cent. The proportion of Negroes increased to 18 10, 
when it reached 37 per cent., leaving only 63 per cent, 
as the proportion of whites, and this remained station- 
ary for thirty years. Since 18 10 the proportion of 
Negroes has diminished. That is, for the first half of 
the century the Negro population increased more rapidly 
than the whites, while during the last half of the 
century they have increased proportionately less rapidly 
than the whites, and, in proportion to the numbers, 
they are diminishing. The whites have increased in a 
century to the census year of 1890 from three millions 
to fifty-five millions, and the Negroes from three-fourths 



TKe R.ace Qxiestion 69 

of a million to seven millions five hundred thousand. 
The whites in 1890 were eighteen times as numerous 
as in 1790; the Negroes only ten times as numerous. 
In 1790 they were 19.27 of the whole population, and 
in 1890 they were only 11.93 of the total population. 
Excepting the defective census of 1880 and the census of 
1 8 10, every census report shows that the Negro is fall- 
ing behind the white man in the rate of increase, thus 
showing beyond any doubt that the white race is more 
and more becoming the numerically dominant race. 
The most careful investigations settle the fact that the 
dominant civiUzation will be the white civilization, and 
the plain figures dispel the spectre of the numerical 
black control in this country and in the South. 

A kindred method to colonization is the question of 
Diffusion, which has all the objections with even less of 
the advantages of the other plans. This plan, mark 
you, is proposed by those who believe that the rights 
of the Negro, political and otherwise, are not respected 
by his white brethren in the South. The idea is 
practically to take away from him by diffusion in other 
communities in other States any power for danger which 
he may have, thus rendering him a small factor in a 
large community. In other words the idea is to destroy 
him entirely as a political, economic, or social factor. 
The practical method, as I understand it, from those 
with whom I have discussed this subject, is to say to a 
certain number of Negroes, we will place you in different 
portions of the United States. 500,000 of you will go 



70 Some SovitHem Qviestions 

to Ohio; 100,000 to Dakota; 100,000 will go to Cali- 
fornia, and so on. Here arise all of the great questions 
I have before discussed without any of the advantages. 
How will you procure the land in the different parts of 
the country upon which to place the discitizenized and 
deported Negroes ? How will you get the consent of 
the people now living upon the lands to move out and 
give their homes to the Negro race ? I will be pardoned 
for not discussing this subject further. 

Then, again, there is another method, and that is the 
Absorption of the Negro race by the whites. Throw 
down all of the laws against inter-marriage of the white 
and black. Destroy all of the social laws affecting the 
equality or inequality of the races. Open the doors of 
the churches, of the family, and of the home, to white 
and black promiscuously. Do away with the white 
race by an absolute interchange of blood with the black, 
and let all be reduced to one level or raised to one 
height in the commingling of the two races. I^t us 
consider this idea. What has been the effect of com- 
mingling of the two races one upon the other ? I will 
not discuss this branch of the subject with any idea that 
there is any hope of its being adopted. I discuss it for 
the reason that it is one of the remedies prominently 
suggested. The South would never consider it. That 
is absolute, and I give it a place in my discussion to-day 
so that I can in some degree contribute my mite in 
showing that it is not feasible and should not be con- 
sidered. It is too horrible for contemplation. This is 



XHe IVace Question 71 

practically a world question, and is being considered 
in all of its phases by numbers of people interested in 
the world's development. In looking over the learn- 
ing of this question, I have been amazed at the vast 
number of people learned in sociology and in science 
who insist that this is the only method of settling 
the destiny of the two races in America. I will be par- 
doned if I do not go into a close detail of the physi- 
cal discussion. As Le Conte well says, there is no ques- 
tion but that the crossing of different varieties within 
the limits of the primary race may produce good effect, 
but that the crossing of the primary races themselves 
has been at all times and under all circumstances 
ruinous. Race aversion is the best evidence of the fact 
that the danger line has been passed. I mean race 
aversion in the scientific sense. 

Of all the races, we presume that the farthest apart are 
the black-skinned Negro and the Teuton race, the latter 
to which we largely belong. These are extreme types, 
and their permanent union would be, in all probability, 
the worst of any union which could be devised as be- 
tween nations. What we are trying to do is to save the 
Negro race as well as our own. It is in greater danger 
than the white race. In all countries and at all times 
the inexorable rule has been that the weaker race has 
been annihilated by the stronger. This has been 
especially the case in the all-rule of the Saxon race. 
We wish to preserv^e the Negro for some splendid 
characteristics with which he is endowed. That the 



72 Some SoxitKern Questions 

Negro has magnificent characteristics is shown by the 
fact that his is the only race which has ever risen from 
the iron rule of the Anglo-Saxon. In every other case 
in conclusions with the Anglo-Saxon, the weaker race 
has been held by an iron hand, or has been wiped out 
of existence. The Negro to-day is as strong as ever, 
notwithstanding his contention with this dominant race. 
It would not be fitting at this place to go into a discus- 
sion of the physical differences, but with two races in 
which there is the great difference in the grade of evo- 
lution that exists between the Anglo-Saxon and the 
Negro races, class distinction seems to be absolutely 
necessary for the preservation of both. I will remark 
here at this point of the discussion that this race instinct 
exists not alone in the South, but it is as strong and 
vigorous in the North, The obvious reasons of its 
acuteness in the South are the closeness of our contact 
with the Negroes, and the near knowledge of their over- 
whelming danger to the white race and to the country. 
In proportion to the number of Negroes in the South, 
in proportion to their intelligence and to their effect upon 
the body politic, there is as much race instinct and race 
prejudice to-day in the North as there is in the South. 
Reflect but for a moment that there is 92 per cent, of the 
Negroes in the South ; that in Louisiana, Mississippi, 
and South Carolina more than one-half of the inhabi- 
tants are Negroes, and in South Carolina, three out of 
every five people whom you meet are Negroes. In 
most places in the North only i per cent, are Negroes, 



THe IVace Qxiestion 73 

and at the highest, 5 per cent. With this statement be- 
fore us, let me ask our Northern friends, who suggest the 
idea of Assimilation as an easy escape from the Race 
Question, what are their feelings upon the initiative steps 
of this process ? Of the intelligent Negroes of the North, 
how many places of public trust are held by them ? To 
what ofl&ces are they elected ? What part have they in 
the social organizations of the North ? Do the hotels 
welcome them ? Have they any place in the homes of 
the Northern men, and does the Northern man visit the 
Negro's home as a guest ? As a matter of fact is not 
the prejudice in the North as great as it is in the South ? 
And here let me say, in no spirit of recrimination, that 
in any State in the North, where large numbers of Ne- 
groes have been massed therein, the troubles have come 
more quickly and have been more deadly in their conse- 
quences than in the South. I am not pointing the finger 
of criticism at the Northern States, but am simply at- 
tempting by illustration to enforce this great doctrine of 
race integrity . Let us reason from a higher law than the 
mere physical law that we have been discussing. Let 
us appeal to the great destiny of the nation pushing 
its civilization over the earth, and let us find out from 
history what has been the effect of the amalgamation 
of two primary races so different as the Negro and the 
white man. 

Canon Rawlinson, who has investigated this question 
to a greater extent than any man in this century, filled 
as he was with the idea of the amalgamation of the 



74 Some SoutKern Questions 

races, admits that, beyond any question, the settlement 
of the Race Question by this process in the United 
States is the most perplexing question which has ever 
come before the world for settlement. 

Basing our intense opposition to this method upon 
precedent, we appeal to history to settle for the South- 
ern race the question of the amalgamation of the races, 
I will be pardoned for a most apposite quotation from 
Dr. Palmer. 

" I. Before all the others there is the problem of race 
in adjusting the relationship between two distinct peo- 
ple that must occupy the same soil. It is idle to blink 
it, for it stares us in the face wherever we turn ; and 
the timidity or sensitiveness which shrinks from its dis- 
cussion is equally unwise and unsafe, for the country 
needs to know the comprehensive principles which will 
compel its settlement. Under the old regime, the re- 
lation between the two was exceedingly simple, because 
it was domestic. The bonds were those of guardianship 
and control on the one side, of dependence and service 
on the other. All this is now changed, and the two 
races are equal before the law. The suddenness of this 
translation, without any educational preparation for 
the new position, was a tremendous experiment. It 
furnishes an illustration of the heroic boldness of 
American legislation, and its early and successful solu- 
tion will aflford the most conspicuous proof of the vigor 
of the national life. My own conviction is, that it is a 
far too delicate and difficult problem to be solved by 



THe Race Qviestion 75 

empirical legislation — either by the state on its political 
side, or by the Church on its ecclesiastical side. It 
must be patiently wrought out in the shape which an 
infinitely wise Providence shall direct — and it needs 
the element of time, with its silent but supreme assimi- 
lating and conciliatory influence. But so far as I can 
understand the teachings of history, there is one under- 
lying principle which must control the question. It is 
indispensable that the purity of the race shall be pre- 
served on either side ; for it is the condition of life to 
the one, as much as to the other. The argument for 
this I base upon the declared policy of the Divine Ad- 
ministration from the days of Noah until now. The 
sacred writings clearly teach that, to prevent the amaz- 
ing wickedness which brought upon the earth the 
purgation of the Deluge, God saw fit to break the 
human family into sections. He separated them by 
destroying the unity of speech ; then by an actual dis- 
persion, appointing the bounds of their habitations, to 
which they were conducted by the mysterious guidance 
of His will. The first pronounced insurrection against 
His supremacy was the attempt of Nimrod to oppose 
and defeat this policy ; and the successive efibrts of all 
the great kingdoms to achieve universal conquest have 
been but the continuation of that primary rebellion — 
always attended by the same overwhelming failure that 
marked the first. Among the methods of fixed separa- 
tion between these original groups, was the discrimina- 
tion effected by certain physical characteristics, so early 



76 Some SovitHem Questions 

introduced that no records of tradition or of stone assign 
their commencement, and so broadly marked in their 
respective types as to lead a class of physiologists to 
deny the unity of human origin. I certainly believe 
them to be mistaken in this conclusion, and firmly hold 
to the inspired testimony that * God hath made of one 
blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of 
the earth. ' But there is no escape firom the correspond- 
ing testimony, biblical and historical, that the human 
family, originally one, has been divided into certain 
large groups, for the purpose of being kept historically 
distinct. And all attempts, in every age of the world, 
and from whatever motives, whether of ambitious do- 
minion or of an infidel humanitarianism, to force these 
together are identical in aim and parallel in guilt with 
the usurpation and insurrection of the first Nimrod. 

" However true that the specific varieties within these 
groups may safely intermingle and cross each other, the 
record of four thousand years confirms the fact that 
there can be no large or permanent commixture of 
these great social zones without ruin ; and that ruin as 
complete as can be conceived, since it extends to the 
entire physical, intellectual, and moral nature. Follow 
the history of colonization by the Anglo-Saxon and 
Latin races respectively. The former, distinguished by 
what I may be permitted to term the instinct of race, 
has steadfastly refused to debase its blood by such a 
mixture ; and over all the world, in all latitudes, their 
colonies have thriven. England, for example, boasts 



XKe IVace Question 77 

to-day of her immense dependencies amidst the snows 
of Canada and the jungles of India. On the other hand, 
the latter, with a feebler pride of race, has blended with 
every people, and filled the earth with a mixed breed — 
the most emasculated to be found upon the globe, in- 
capable of maintaining a stable government anywhere, 
or of developing the resources of the lands they burden 
with their presence," 

Specifically let us see what has been the effect of the 
amalgamation upon the races. 

Take for example the miserable inhabitants of West 
Griqualand of South Africa, hybrids of Dutch colonists 
and Hottentots, the Zambos of Western South America, 
mongrels of mixed European and the native Americans, 
the Portuguese- Malay half-castes of the East Indies, 
half-breeds of New Zealand, the Dutch- Malay half- 
breeds of Java, the Mongolian and Slavic amalgama- 
tion of Russian Asia, and the Portuguese and Negro 
population of Brazil. In every one of these instances, 
there is to-day a living horrible example of the mixing 
of the primary races. It is only necessary for me to 
mention these without further discussing them. They 
are treacherous, low in intelligence, wretched in body 
and physical make-up, unstable as the water, entirely 
unfit for governmental afiairs, miserable, wretched 
hybrids. The most wonderful example we have to- 
day of the mixing of the races is in Egypt, where for 
ages the project of amalgamating the Negro and the 
Caucasian has been tried under the protection of the 



78 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

law, the Negro flowing in on one side and the Cau- 
casian out on the other, thus furnishing the world's 
finest opportunity for the intermingling and comming- 
ling of the two primary races of the earth. Whenever 
the Caucasian would attempt to clear itself, it would be 
intermingled again by the influx of the Negro slaves. 
Is not Egypt a suflScient example of the ill effects of the 
philanthropic idea of some of our friends ? A mongrel 
race without power or character, making a ruin of the 
land which for ages was the seat of the highest 
civilization on the face of the earth. The race never 
succeeded until it was put under the strong hand of 
the Anglo-Saxon. Is there need for fuller argument 
than we have before us in Mexico, South and Central 
America, and Hayti ? Is it the time in the history of 
the world that the nation's life should be trifled with ? 
The great problem of social and representative govern- 
ment has been settled by the Anglo-Saxon in this 
country. He has just levelled the forest, built the city, 
and opened the road. He has placed here the most 
magnificent civilization on the earth, founded, popu- 
lated the state, levelled the mountain, and has destroyed 
all of the physical obstructions which have been before 
him. The vast spaces which the world considered 
could not be occupied for hundreds of years he has in 
one generation filled with smiling plenty and with the 
habitations of happiness and of pleasure. He will not 
stop here. His earth hunger is not appeased. He has 
settled largely the physical and governmental questions 



TKe R.ace Qviestion 79 

in this country. He has stepped across to the Islands 
of the Sea, and the hand of the Anglo-Saxon is to-day 
upon the Bast, from which he will not recede. He 
will no longer be satisfied with his own continent and 
his own people, and the Anglo-Saxon race to-day in 
the world is nerving itself practically for the world's 
conquest and a contest with all nations of the earth. 
"One hundred years hence," says Lavelaye, "there 
will be two colossal powers in the world, beside which 
Germany, England, France, and Italy will be as pigmies 
— the United States and Russia. ' ' I ask if, with this 
marvellous future before us, we shall risk this world- 
conquest by an ill-attempted settlement of the question 
by a race admixture which may arrest the race which 
seems to be destined by the Almighty for the civiliza- 
tion of the world ? The risk is too great, and the discus- 
sion seems needless. 

The only plan upon which the Negro can work out 
his destiny is along the lines of a separate race entity. 
That is a practical solution of the situation. He was 
for 150 years a chattel and a slave, dependent entirely 
upon his master for everything in life ; dependent for 
his clothes, for his medicine, for his shelter, and for his 
protection. Since the period of slavery was com- 
pleted, he has been for over thirty years the ward of 
the nation. Millions of dollars have been poured out 
upon him. Help has been extended in every way. He 
was hedged about immediately after his emancipation 
by the victorious armies of the North. The Freedman's 



8o Some SovitKem Questions 

Bureau, with its race of dependents, was in charge of 
affairs. For every morsel of food which went into his 
mouth, for every scrap of clothes upon his back, he was 
dependent upon the white race. To such an extent, in 
the first years of his emancipation, was this condition 
of dependence carried out, that to a great measure was 
destroyed his independence of character. Outside of 
the great Race Question, is the other great question, 
if the Negro expects to become a factor in the civiliza- 
tion of this day, he must not be a mere hanger-on to the 
white race. Not only race unity is absolutely necessary 
to him, but social race separation is as important. 
Mixed schools mean the white teacher in every instance; 
mixed churches mean the white preacher ; mixed hotels 
mean the ownership of the property by the white man 
and the serving by the black man. In every instance, 
it means that the Negro, instead of having inculcated 
within him the idea of independence, of striking 
out for himself, of uplifting himself, will depend 
upon the stronger hand of the white man to guide 
him. Without confidence in himself, he can never 
become a potent factor in the civilization of this 
day. He can never become a missionary to other 
lands when he himself never preaches. He can 
never become a manager in the business of this day 
when he occupies a servile position to those who 
manage the affairs of to-day. As I have said before, 
over and above the great question of race instinct, the 
situation of to-day demands the absolute indepen- 



THe IVace Question 8i 

dence of the Negro in all of the race and social affairs 
of this life. 

This is the question which now arises. If neither 
Diffusion, Colonization, nor Absorption will effect the 
purpose, what remedy do you propose ? It seems to 
me that the best plan is to inaugurate the most efficient 
plan of industrial and general education for the Negro 
in all of the affairs of life, and in the meantime to restrict 
the suffrage to an intelligence or property basis, or a 
combination of both bases. The acute race troubles 
in the South have risen mainly from two causes, ignor- 
ance and politics. The ignorant use of his political 
powers has done more to keep the Negro and white 
man estranged than all other causes combined. There 
can be no practical solution of the question of the races 
in the South without settling the political question. 
When the Negro has arrived at an intelligence basis, 
absolutely the same to both the white and the black 
voter in the State in which he lives, then, and not until 
then, should he be entrusted with a vote. I will be 
excused for a discussion which is to some extent 
fundamental, and the discussion may seem contrary to 
the popular proposition that all men are free and equal. 
My time will allow but a glance at the general prin- 
ciples. It may seem to our friends in the North that 
we are presenting them with a club rather than an 
olive branch, but the doctrine that the government 
should be under the control of those best capable of 
self-government has been recognized at all times and, 

6 



&2 Some SovitKem Qxiestions 

with one exception, under all circumstances, as being 
the true idea of proper government. Wherever this 
fundamental principle has been departed from, govern- 
mental ruin and personal loss have surely followed. 
It may be inquired, if this proposition is true, and if 
such is the view of the Southern people, why has it 
not been heretofore acted upon? We reply that no 
opportunity has been given the South. That those 
governing in the South previous to the abolition of 
slavery were substantially the best and the most intel- 
ligent of its people, but that the voting population 
which has been cast en masse upon the South since the 
war has been to an unheard of extent ignorant and in- 
jurious to the state. The survival of the fittest and 
the rule of the intelligent is a law which is as inexorable 
as any known to students in the science of government. 
Place two classes of people, one intelligent and the 
other ignorant, in the same country, and the intelligent 
element will surely govern. Place two races in the 
same country side by side and the superior or intelligent 
race will as surely dominate. The illustration of Le 
Conte is apposite. Place upon a desert island loo 
children ten years old and loo people in fair health, 
strength, and age. Surely those of adult age will govern 
and should govern the country according to their own 
ideas. Take his further proposition of looo Australian 
blacks on an island and looo educated Caucasians 
living with them. The whole salvation of the govern- 
ment of that territory depends upon the intelligent 



THe Race Qviestion 83 

portion of the community controlling its affairs. I do 
not mean by this doctrine that the intelligent should 
enslave the weaker and less intelligent portion of the 
denizens of the country. You cannot argue a reason- 
able proposition to the redudio ad abstirdum. The 
Negro in this country has the right of freedom and to 
the civil rights granted him by the law, and to all of 
the natural rights which the law and the constitution 
give him, but the highest and best law of self-preser- 
vation militates against the proposition that the greatest 
political rights of the country should be turned over to 
a class unfitted to exercise them. If this proposition is 
not carried out surely comes with it the destruction of 
the state. As an English statesman has said, the freeing 
of the blacks, the conferring upon them the franchise, 
was the boldest governmental experiment of modern 
times. The English government in all of its governing 
wisdom has held strictly the reins of government in 
its own hands in its dealings with the less intelligent 
races. In India, where the country swarms with a race 
which is certainly the equal of the Negro in intellec- 
tuality and governing capacity, the supreme rule is 
held tightly and closely by the English as the govern- 
ing body. It is the true axiom of government that the 
higher or more intelligent class of people shall control. 
This has been the experience of 3000 years of govern- 
mental matters. In all of the history of government 
we have been the first people to abruptly modify this 
proposition. I^eft to the result of education alone after 



84 Some SoxitKern Questions 

this great lapse of time possibly, the question may 
settle itself, but during that educational period, while 
the race is being enlightened and uplifted, governmental 
ruin would be the result. We reason from the past to 
the future. The Negro was not fitted for the reins of 
government. When the government was turned over 
to him, he fell into the hands of men who, if they were 
not ignorant, were infinitely worse. And you to whom 
I am talking have seen the effect of the violation of this 
fundamental rule. The public debt in your State was 
increased from $8,000,000 to $25,000,000. The debt of 
Tennessee was increased by $16,000,000 ; the debt of 
Georgia was increased $13,000,000. In less than four 
months, North Carolina issued $25,000,000 of bonds 
for railroads. The State debts in the South were in- 
creased nearly four hundred millions. Martial law was 
proclaimed. Every principle of the Magna Charta was 
thrown to the winds. The sacred rights of habeas 
corpus were violated. Negro regiments commanded 
by white renegades took men and women from their 
homes and incarcerated them in jail without warrant 
of law. Men were returned for the highest ofiices in 
the land without the pretence of an election. In the 
State of my birth, I have seen a judge on the bench 
who had never looked into a law book deciding ques- 
tions of life and death. I have seen a Negro clerk 
holding that important position when he could not 
sign his name to the records. I have seen Negro 
officers sworn to protect the law when their whole 



THe Race Question 85 

oflScial lives were engaged in protecting the lawbreaker 
and the scoundrel. Onerous laws were passed by the 
legislatures, honest debts were repudiated and dis- 
honest ones created, personal liberty was ruthlessly 
violated, a reign of terror was witnessed throughout 
the length and breadth of the land. All of these evils 
came from the violation of the fundamental principle 
that the government of the state should be in the hands 
of the intelligent. 

It is not my purpose to open old wounds or to bring 
back unpleasant memories or to stir up race animosities. 
It is my desire alone in the view I am taking to make 
the position of the Southern man plain and clear to the 
thinking world. The ignorant Negro is not properly 
qualified to cast a vote, and neither is the ignorant 
white man. As my distinguished friend, W. H. 
Baldwin, a Northern man, who more thoroughly than 
any one in the North whom I know understands this 
question, says : " When the Negro was freed under the 
constitution, he was given equal rights with the white 
citizens ; suffrage was thrust upon him. This was in- 
jurious to him as well as to the white man. He was 
not ready for it, and he could not use it intelligently. 
From this cause alone the difiBculties of the problem 
have been infinitely increased. How could we hope 
that it would be successful ? After thirtj^-five years, 
we find the Negro practically disfranchised in many of 
the Southern States, and he should be if he is not 
properly qualified to cast a vote ; but his qualifications 



86 Some SoutHern Qxiestions 

should be determined in exactly the same manner as 
the qualifications of the white man ; and to this the 
Negro has no objection. The legal right of the Negro 
to vote has been the only serious cause of hostility on 
the part of the Southern white man. The Negro is 
the friend of the white man in all matters except 
politics ; but in politics he has seldom joined forces 
with his white neighbors for the common interest of 
the community in which he lives. If the time comes 
when the Negro is sufficiently educated, suflficiently 
intelligent to deal with political questions purely as 
questions relating to the community in which he lives, 
and without regard to sentimental party lines, he will 
receive more reasonable consideration from the whites 
in the South. Now is the time when he should 
recognize this opportunity." 

This is our great trouble. Under the constitution as 
it stands, ignorant numbers in many States give the 
right of control of the State government. This may be 
true as a matter of statute law, but it is against the 
great fundamental principle of the best government of 
the State and the preservation of the people, and where- 
ever this principle meets the statute law of the land, 
the statute law will surely be broken to pieces. The 
higher law will always rule without regard to statutes 
and limitations. 

Salus populi suprema est lex. 
The political question has practically brought about 



TKe IVace Question 87 

the acute trouble between the races. It has debauched 
the ballot-box and has terrorized both the white and the 
Negro. It is not alone debauching to the Negro but 
to the white man in the South. To allow the Negro the 
vote to which his numbers in many cases entitle him 
means the ruin of the State, and to take away from him 
that statute right means the violation of the laws of 
the land, a position the horrors of which should 
appeal to every man who loves his country and believes 
in perpetuating its institutions and keeping its laws 
unbroken. The South stands ready to give the Negro 
every right granted by the laws, but it exacts that as a 
condition the substantial political control of the State 
must be kept with the white man as the more intelli- 
gent. Then, how can this danger be eliminated with- 
out casting upon the disfranchised the odium such as 
usually applies to those generally excluded by the 
suffrage statute ? How can we place the disfranchised 
so that with their own elBForts they may become voters ? 
The South desires the best interest of the Negroes, and 
desires to give them the franchise when they are suf- 
ficiently intelligent to properly use it. Thus, we are 
brought to the proposition that there is but one plan to 
enable us to be honest to the Negro, preserve the 
statute laws and at the same time save unharmed the 
great fundamental law of the preservation of the State. 
That is, to do away with the enforced debaucheries 
of the ballot, settle the question by inaugurating the 
highest and most efficient plan of education for the Negro 



88 Some SoxitHern Qxiestions 

and by confining the ballot to the intelligent citizen, 
white or black. If this is adopted, it should be carried 
out impartially and absolutely, and under this plan the 
interference with any intelligent voter, white or black, 
should be visited with the most rigorous penalties 
known to the law. The glory of the State would be in 
its intelligent voting population, and the disgrace and 
dishonor of the State would be in taking from any 
member of that intelligent voting citizenhood the right 
to cast his vote in any manner he may desire. The 
limiting the vote in this manner, I insist, should fall 
impartially upon the intelligent voter, whatever may 
be his color. The ignorant white voting population of 
the South is practically as dangerous to her institutions 
as the ignorant voter in the Negro ranks. Naturally, 
however, by reason of the greater number of Negroes 
in some sections, it would mean, and I frankly say it 
is intended to mean, the elimination of a great many 
ignorant Negroes from the franchise. I boldly say 
that this is the intention so to do, and the plan of my 
discussion here to-day is to eliminate the ignorant 
Negro voter until by education he is able to take an 
intelligent part in the government of the country. The 
taking away from the colored voter any part of the 
electorial franchise which, under the pre-existing state 
of affairs, belongs to him, carries with it the correspond- 
ing proposition that, under such a condition, the 
government of the State must absolutely assume the 
protection of the Negro. I am perfectly plain in saying 



XHe Race Qviestion 89 

that, whilst under the existing circumstances we have 
done well by the Negro, still the people of the South, 
worried, antagonized, and humiliated by the question 
of Negro control, have not had that regard for their 
own interests which they should have had in affording 
absolute and earnest protection to the Negro under all 
circumstances. The South is being injured by this 
class of crime, and it should be mercilessly stamped out. 
We have done well, I admit, under the circumstances, 
but it is our bounden duty to increase this protection 
in the future. 

In order that what I may say may not appear treason- 
able, I will say that these views as to the restriction of 
the Negro vote to an intelligence basis were the views 
of the wisest men in the Emancipation era. 

Mr. Lincoln in his letter to Governor Hahn says : 
" Now, you are about to have a convention which, 
among other things, will probably define the elective 
franchise. I barely suggest for your private considera- 
tion whether some of the colored people may not be 
allowed in, as for instance the very intelligent, and es- 
pecially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks." 

Mr. Sumner believed in Negro suffrage only for the 
reason that " their votes are needed in the North 
as well as at the South. There are Northern States 
where the good cause can be made safe by their votes 
beyond question. There are other States where the 
vote will be like the last preponderating weight in a 
nicely balanced scales. Let them vote in New York 



po Some SovitKern Qxaestions 

and the scales which hang so doubtful will incline 
toward the Republican cause." 

Mr. Stevens, in February, 1867, and the President 
endeavored to carry out a plan by giving a suffrage to 
all male citizens who could read and write and owned 
$250 worth of property. In 1866, Mr. Stevens intro- 
duced a bill to reconstruct North Carolina upon a basis 
giving the franchise to males able to read and write. 
President Grant in his message, December 7, 1875, used 
the following language : 

"Make education compulsory so as to deprive all 
persons who can not read and write from becoming 
voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, how- 
ever, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the 
time this amendment takes effect," 

President Johnson, in his veto of the District of 
Columbia Suffrage Bill, on January 5, 1867, uses the 
language, which is extremely appropriate to the sub- 
ject under discussion : " Possessing these advantages 
but a limited time, the greater number, perhaps, having 
entered the District of Columbia during the latter years 
of the war, or since its termination, one may well 
pause to inquire whether after so brief a probation 
they are, as a class, capable of intelligent exercise of 
the right of suffrage and qualified to discharge the 
duties of official position. . . . Clothed with the 
elective franchise, their numbers, already in excess of 
the demand for labor, would soon increase by an influx 
from the adjoining States. Drawn from fields where 



THe Race Question 91 

employment is abundant, they would in vain seek it 
here, and so add to the embarrassment already experi- 
enced from the large class of idle persons congregated 
in the District. Hardly 3^et capable of forming correct 
judgments upon the important questions that often 
make the issues of a political contest, they could 
readily be made subservient to the purpose of design- 
ing persons. . . . It is within their power to come 
into the District in such numbers as to have supreme 
control of the white race and to govern them by their 
own officers, and by the exercise of all the municipal 
authority, among the rest, of the power of taxation 
over property in which they have no interest." 

His statement was borne out by the fact that when 
Negro suffi-age was found in the District of Columbia 
to be entirely and utterly out of keeping with the 
Negro's educational qualifications, the suffrage in the 
District of Columbia was wiped out by act of Congress. 

The restriction of the ballot-box to the intelligence 
basis is not a new proposition in this country. In the 
North the idea first had its origin, and it has been suc- 
cessfully carried out. Connecticut in 1885, and Maine 
in 1892, adopted provisions of law limiting the sufirage 
to an intelligence basis, and a distinguished statesman 
of Rhode Island, in relating the restrictions placed upon 
the ignorant foreign vote, emulates the language of 
an orator from the "Black Belt" of the South. He 
says: "These men, thus transformed into American 
citizens in violation of the plainest provisions of law, 



92 Some SovitKern Questions 

ignorant of our institutions, unacquainted with our 
forms of government, embittered against all govern- 
ment, and ready with little solicitude to become the 
instruments of demagogues, are sufficiently dangerous 
when absorbed in the great agricultural States where 
healthy American sentiment pervades ; but they are a 
menace to the public qualifications and the stability of 
legislation and orderly government when precipitated 
in overwhelming numbers upon a small country like 
Rhode Island." 

In the South there have been various methods 
adopted for the suppression of the ignorant vote. They 
are summarized in the following : The payment of 
taxes before voting, centralizing the vote by the use 
of a number of ballot-boxes and the complication of 
the election laws, and recently by an express educa- 
tional qualification. All of these systems, except the 
last, are vitally defective. This has been shown in 
practice. The great defect of all the Southern systems, 
except the educational basis, has been that the exercise 
of the ballot has no uplifting effect upon the Negro. 
The causing him to get rid of his tax receipts, the 
arrangement to centralize the vote and thus take from 
him that which the Negro thinks he has a right to, 
and the system of complicating the ballot-boxes, are all 
detrimental to the white as well as irritating to the 
Negro. There is no hope either for the white man or 
the Negro under such a system. It is hurtful to the 
whole body of voters, white and black, and every 



TKe Race Question 93 

intelligent man in the South recognizes that as 
soon as possible both races should escape from the 
anomalous position in which they have been placed. 
The white man of the South desires to be fair. His 
object is to be honest with the Negro. It is only com- 
pulsion which makes him adopt any system which is 
unfair to the Negroes. In every State in which the intel- 
ligence basis has been adopted it has been successful. 
The elections have been orderly. The acute questions 
are eliminated. In I^ouisiana, in the by-election since 
the adoption of the intelligence basis, the elections have 
been quiet and orderly and entirely fair. In Mississippi 
and South Carolina, the Race Question has been largely 
eliminated. From every section of the State in which 
this basis has been adopted, there comes the report of 
the success in the practice of the statute confining the 
ballot to the intelligence basis. There is no intention 
to disfranchise the Negro as a class. It is not intended 
to violate the provision as to discrimination on account 
of the " race, color, or previous condition of servitude, " 
but it is intended to do away with anj'^ questions as to 
the fairness of the elections in the South, and to place 
the highest exercise of citizenship in the hands of those 
best qualified to exercise its provisions. As the citizens 
of the country, white or black, become qualified, they 
should be and will be admitted absolutely impartiall}'' 
in the exercise of the ballot. From a somewhat intimate 
knowledge of the South and of the men who are in 
control of its affairs, I believe that there is no possible 



94 Some SovitKern. Qxiestions 

question but that the intelligent black will be allowed 
to approach the ballot-box and exercise his right to 
vote as impartially as the intelligent white man. The 
restriction of the ballot will do away largely with the 
acute issue. 

It now remains in the line of our discussion to ascer- 
tain what has been done for the Negro in the way of 
education in the South, and what has been the effect 
of education upon the Negro, whether he has apprecia- 
bly progressed by reason of that education in the 
direction of an intelligent voting citizenship. If you 
so restrict his ballot, will he ever become sufficiently 
intelligent ? It has been somewhat the fashion among 
certain of our Northern friends to hold out the idea 
that it has been a half-hearted attempt upon the part of 
the South to educate the Negro, and that what has been 
done has been done largely through Northern philan- 
thropy, and that the South has only been playing at pub- 
lic education. I^et me say that the war left the South ab- 
solutely prostrated, farms devastated, homes destroyed, 
manufactories levelled. State and personal credit entirely 
gone through twelve years of actual battle and political 
debauchery. The South, rising from its stricken con- 
dition, undertook honestly and faithfully to educate 
her former slaves. I will be pardoned for a full dis- 
cussion of the statistics applying to the education of 
the Negroes for the twofold purpose of showing the 
great increase of educational facilities in the South, and 
the intelligent appreciation of the education upon the 



TKe Race Qviestion 95 

part of the Negroes. The settlement of this question 
is crucial to our discussion. 

In the slave-holding States in 1870-71, there was ex- 
pended by the South |8oo,ooo in round numbers for 
the education of the colored race. The expenditure 
per capita of the school population was $2.97 for 
the white and 49c. for the Negro. In 1872 and 1873, 
this sum had increased to practically 5^1,000,000 
on the part of the South, with an increase to 54c. 
per capita for the colored population. Mark you, 
this was in a year when in my State a man who 
had carried a musket in the Southern army was not 
allowed either to vote or to hold office ; when the South 
had not yet risen from the ashes of her destroyed homes. 
In 1878, for the Negro, there was expended in the 
Southern States, in round numbers, $2,200,000, with 
an expenditure of $1.09 per capita for the colored race, 
double what it had been five years before. In 1886 and 
1887, it had risen to the grand total of $4,500,000 for 
the education of the colored race, and $1.86 expendi- 
ture per capita for that race. In 1891 and 1892, it had 
risen to $5,500,000 for the colored race, or $2.15 per 
capita for the colored Southern school population. In 
1897 ^od 1898, this sum had swollen to $6,600,000, in 
round numbers, with a per capita of expenditure for 
the colored school population, to $2.34. In absolute 
school expenditure in all these years, with the States 
rocking from the throes of a revolution such as the 
world has never seen, the Southern people of the 



96 Some SovitHern Questions 

United States expended in round numbers $103,000,- 
000 for their former slaves. This statement will be 
emphasized by the propositions that in Georgia the 
Negroes in 1892 returned, in round numbers, $15,000,- 
000 of taxable property', against $450,000,000 returned 
by the whites; that in North Carolina, in 1 891, there 
was $234,000,000 worth of property listed for taxation 
by the white people, as against only $8,000,000 for the 
colored people, and in the State of South Carolina,* 
$1.81 is raised from each taxpayer to-^rovide$i.oo for 
each school child ; while in Montana only 36c. has to 
be raised. I would think that the example of South- 
Carolina alone would be an answer to any criticism on 
the part of any section when you will understand that 
two-thirds of the taxpayers in South Carolina are 
colored, and they possess scarcely any property in the 
State. In Virginia, in 1891, the tax collected from 
white citizens amounted to $3,000,000 in round num- 
bers, and from the colored citizens, $163,000. The 
amount paid for public schools for the whites, $588,000, 
and for the Negroes, $324,000. In all of the Southern 
school systems there is no distinction against the 
Negroes, except to say that there shall be separate 
schools. 

But pardon this digression from my main argument. 
lyCt us by actual figures carefully consider the effect of 
education upon the Negro. Is he approximating the in- 
telligent voting citizen ? Says the School Commissioner 
of the United States : " The enrollment of the colored 



TKe IVace Qxiestion 97 

people was a little more than 27 per cent, of the full 
enrollment in the Southern States, and they received 
upwards of 20 per cent, of the money expended. As a 
matter of fact, a comparatively small amount of this 
was collected from the taxation of colored citizens. ' ' I 
quote the able Commissioner : " The white people of the 
South believed that the State should place a common- 
school education within the reach of every child, and 
they have done this much to give every citizen, white 
and black, an even start in life." Now, continuing our 
statement, has the Negro since the war increased his 
intelligence to such an extent as to justify the argu- 
ment that within a comparatively short time he will 
become an intelligent citizen and win' an intelligent 
as well as a legal right to citizenship ? I again follow 
the discussion of the intelligent Commissioner of Educa- 
tion. It is authoritative as well as careful. " In 1870, 
more than 85 per cent, of the colored population of the 
South over ten years of age could not read. In 1880 the 
illiterate had been reduced to 75 per cent., and in 1890 
to 60 per cent, of the colored population. In many of 
the States of the South the percentage is even below 50. 
In thirty years 40 per cent, of the illiteracy of the Negro 
race had entirely disappeared. 

"The total enrollment in the public schools of the 
sixteen Southern States and the District of Columbia 
for the year 1896-7 was 5,398,076, the number of col- 
ored children being 1,460,084 and the number of white 
children 3,937,992. The estimated number of the chil- 

7 



98 Some SoxitHern Qviestions 

dren in the South from five to eighteen years of age 
was 8,625,770. Of this number, 2,816,340, or 32.65 per 
cent, were children of the Negro race, and 5,809,430, 
or 67.35 per cent., were white children. It will be 
seen that the number of colored children enrolled was 
51.84 per cent, of the colored school population, and 
the number of white children enrolled was 67.79 per 
cent, of the white school population. The average 
daily attendance in the public schools of the Southern 
States was 3,565,611, the number in the colored schools 
being 904,505, or 61.95 per cent, of the colored school 
enrollment, and the number in the average attendance 
in the white schools being 2,661,106, or 67.58 per cent, 
of the white school enrollment. 

** It may be noted that in Louisiana, Mississippi, and 
South Carolina, the colored school population exceeds 
the white school population. In Kentucky, the num- 
ber of colored children enrolled was 65.52 per cent, of 
the colored school population, a percentage of enrollment 
for the colored schools greater than in any other State, 
and larger than the percentage of white enrollment in at 
least six of the Southern States. In the colored schools of 
Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and South Carolina, 
the average daily attendance was a greater percentage 
of their enrollment than was credited to the white 
schools of the same States upon their enrollment. Of 
the 119,893 public-school teachers in the Southern 
States, 27,435 belong to the colored race. There was 
one colored teacher to every 33 colored children in 



THe Race Question 99 

average attendance, and one white teacher to every 29 
white children in average attendance. 

" For the year 1896-7, the total expenditure for the 
public schools of the sixteen Southern States and the 
District of Columbia was $3 1 , 144, 801 . The cost of the 
schools for the colored race can not be accurately 
stated, but a fair estimate will place the cost of the 
colored schools at about $6,575,000. This is something 
over 20 per cent, of the aggregate expenditure of the 
Southern States, while the average attendance of col- 
ored children was about 26 per cent, of the entire 
average attendance of white and colored pupils. 

** There are at least 178 schools in the United States 
for the secondary and higher education of colored youth 
exclusively. Of this number, one was in Illinois, two 
in Indiana, one in New Jersey, two in Ohio, and three in 
Pennsylvania, the remaining 169 being in the Southern 
States. 

" In the 169 schools, there were employed 1795 pro- 
fessors and teachers, 787 males and 1008 females. 
There was a total enrollment in these schools of 45,402 
students, 20,243 males and 25,159 females, an increase 
of 5275 over the enrollment of the previous year. In 
collegiate grades there were 2108 students, 1526 males 
and 582 females, an increase of 653 over the previous 
year. In the secondary grades there were 15,203 
students, 6944 males and 8259 females, an increase of 
1640 over the year before. In the elementary grades 
of these secondary and collegiate institutions, there 



100 Some Southern Questions 

were 28,091 pupils, 11,773 males and 16,318 females, 
an increase of 2999 over the year 1895-6. 

" In all the colored schools there were 2410 students 
pursuing the classical course, 1312 males and 1098 
females. There were 974 students in scientific courses, 
447 males and 527 females. In English courses there 
were 1 1 , 340 students. The business courses had 295 stu- 
dents, 179 males and 116 females. There were 5081 stu- 
dents in normal or teachers' training courses, 2382 males 
and 2699 females. There were 117 graduates fi^om college 
courses, 103 males and 14 females. There were 1256 
graduates from normal courses, 537 males and 719 
females. The high-school courses had 846 graduates, 
333 males and 513 females. In all there were 131 1 
professional students, 1137 males and 174 females. 
There were 611 students and 68 graduates in theology, 
104 students and 30 graduates in law, 345 students and 
71 graduates in medicine, 38 students and 10 graduates 
in dentistry, 39 students and 20 graduates in phar- 
macy and 174 students and 35 graduates in nurse 
training. 

" That in the 169 schools for the colored race there 
were 13,581 pupils and students receiving industrial 
training, 4970 males and 861 1 females. The number 
in industrial training was almost 40 per cent, of the 
total enrollment in these schools. There were 1027 
of these pupils being trained in farm and garden work, 
1496 in carpentry, 166 in bricklaying, 144 in plaster- 
ing, 149 in painting, 85 in tin and sheet-metal work, 



XHe Race Question roi 

227 in forging, 248 in machine shops, 185 in shoemak- 
ing, 689 in printing, 6728 in sewing, 2349 in cooking, 
and 2753 in other trades. In the libraries of these 
schools there were 244,794 volumes, valued at $203,731. 
The aggregate value of grounds, buildings, furniture, 
and scientific apparatus was $7,714,908. The value of 
benefactions or bequests received during the year 
1896-7 was $303,050. The schools received from the 
public funds for support for the year $271,839, from 
tuition fees $141,262, from productive funds $92,080, 
and from sources not named $540,097, making an 
aggregate income of $1,045,278 for the year." 

These figures are tiresome, but they teach one of the 
greatest lessons of the century. In the line of this 
argument, the valuable statistics of the Commissioner 
of Education showed that in 1890, the Negroes occupied 
550,000 farms ; of the number of homes in the country 
900,000 were occupied by the Negroes ; that twenty - 
two per cent, of their farms were owned by the 
occupants, and that of the farms owned by the Negroes 
over ninety per cent, were without incumbrance. This 
shows a very safe and gratifying progress. This is not 
entirely a clear picture, and the bare figures may be 
somewhat optimistic. It will not be expected that the 
Negro will be educated within a few years. His educa- 
tion has been attended with great difficulties, and dis- 
couragements have been in every step in his existence. 
He has been a slave, has been degraded, and he lives in 
large masses which are dense and hard to reach. He 



I02 Some SoxitHern Questions 

has even now a comparatively small idea of economic 
conditions, and the burden of lifting him has been a 
tremendous one, but, in thejudgment of those who have 
studied the question, he is now moving in the right 
direction, and this of itself speaks volumes. 

In one view, a great deal has been done for the 
Negro. Large sums of money have been spent upon 
his education, yet a vast deal of this money has been 
poorly spent. People in the North, without the know- 
ledge of the social and educational conditions in the 
South, have spent large sums of money in endowing 
sectarian and higher institutions for the Negro. They 
have lavished great sums of money in many instances 
on the education of the Negro for the professions of the 
law, medicine, politics, and the higher education. As 
a matter of fact, a great deal of this education has been 
entirely inopportune and misplaced. The Negro lawyer 
is almost entirely without clients. The Negro doctor 
is almost surely without patients ; the Negro politi- 
cian is a disturber to the country, and in vast num- 
bers of instances the product of these institutions 
has been an injury to his race and the section in which 
he lives. There has been no disguising this proposi- 
tion. Many of the institutions in their teachings have 
been narrow, and, as a matter of fact, it has been the 
experience of the Southern people that oftentimes their 
teachings have been an injury rather than a good to 
the Negro race. What the South wishes is to have 
the Negro educated thoroughly in body, soul, and 



THe Race Qviestion 103 

mind. Let him become a useful farmer ; let an effort 
be made to make a useful artisan ; let him be taught 
the social economics of life, social ethics, how to live 
the cheapest and best ; let him be taught the arts of 
bread-winning, and, instead of being a disturber, in- 
stead of being a useless hanger-on in the section in 
which he lives, he will be a builder-up of that section 
and an honor to his race. Do not understand me to 
decry special literary education. I am earnestly in 
favor of it. I think he should be educated, but, as a 
matter of fact, I do not believe he should be educated 
for pursuits which in the condition of affairs in this 
generation are practically closed to him. The new 
theory of industrial education is a most magnificent 
one, and I look in the next twenty years for a wonder- 
ful increase in the character, standing, and well-being 
of the Negro derived from this common-sense method 
of teaching. If the Northern philanthropist, instead of 
putting a few dollars in the special sectarian, politi- 
cal, or professional education of the Negro in some 
university in the South, would allow that money to be 
placed under the control of people who will, in connec- 
tion with the Southern States, inaugurate a compre- 
hensive, systematic, and general plan for the education 
of the Negro in the pursuits of life, a step will have 
been taken in the settlement of this question. This 
will be more effective than a dozen half endowed, 
half-ofl&cered universities teaching along their own 
lines without regard to a general system or under a 



I04 Some SovitHern. Qviestions 

general control. Many of these institutions in the 
same community are continuously going over the same 
ground as the neighboring school. A central board 
composed of first-class men of the North and of the 
South, full of the needs of the Negro in the South, 
would do more good in one year in dispensing North- 
ern philanthropy among the Negroes than a dozen law, 
medicine, religious, or higher educational universities, 
each working in an aimless fashion. A busy, intelli- 
gent, and successful bread-winner, whether white or 
black, will be respected, and he will do more to bring 
about a settling of the great problem than a hundred 
briefless lawyers or doctors without clients or book- 
keepers who can have no business. 

Do not understand me to say that the general and 
industrial training, and the restriction of the ballot 
to a full intelligence or property basis, will entirely do 
away with the Race Question. I mean that when the 
naturally acute feelings which have been raised by the 
unintelligent exercise of the ballot by the Negro shall 
have been dissipated and he shall have become educated 
as an intelligent workman, the Race Question will be 
infinitely nearer solution. That is the practical aim of 
my discussion here to-day. It is entirely practical. 

While the fields will take vast numbers of Negroes, 
the fields will no longer furnish them with employment. 
The household cannot in the future be relied upon to 
furnish them all with a supply of labor. They cannot 
be confined to the lower and heavier classes of labor. 



TKe Race Qviestion 105 

Vast numbers of the Negroes must find employment in 
the higher classes of labor in the South. I believe that 
with the consummation of the industrial education 
inaugurated by General Armstrong at Hampton, and 
by Booker Washington at Tuskegee, that we will see 
a wonderful change in the Negro. In the South the 
labor lines are not so closely drawn as in the North, 
and they are daily lessening in their severity. If the 
Negro is made a fine artisan, either in the field or upon 
the wall or in the mill or at the bench, almost surely 
will he have work. One great injury to the Negro 
race is that there has not been sufiScient employment 
for him. The consequence naturally is crime. This 
would be the consequence to either white or black not 
employed. This state of afiairs cannot be continued by 
the South. The Negro must have work and the South 
must give it to him. We must look that situation 
squarely in the face. Even if the employment of the 
Negro in the trades and mills will lessen somewhat 
the price of labor, this must be one of the burdens of the 
South. This is a very plain statement, but it is true. 
That being the case, it will be better and easier for the 
South to give work to the intelligent workman, skilled 
in his trade and able to make his living, than to an 
ignorant one. Individuals must suffer in every great 
social or economic livelihood. It will be infinitely 
cheaper for the South to push this system of education 
all over the land for the Negro, than to support him in 
idleness and vice. He must be prepared for a higher 



io6 Some SovitHern Questions 

class of labor. I repeat, the present class of labor is 
not sufficient for him. In this educational idea we 
must not deal in dreams, I insist that we shall not 
tell the Negro that his hope of standing in the South 
at the ballot and at work is dependent upon his labor; 
and then take the labor away from him. We must 
give him a chance, and I am glad to say that over the 
South is a desire to give the intelligent Negro all the 
chance he needs. I do not believe that educating the 
Negro as an artisan will affect the white man as has 
been expected in some quarters. Many people have 
informed me that the Negro coming into the intelligent 
field of labor in the future will intensify the Race 
Question. It may do so in isolated instances. Under 
a settled state of affairs, with the demand for labor at a 
minimum, it might cause serious trouble. In ordinary 
state of affairs in a settled community, such as the 
manufacturing commtmities in the North, where, if 
anything, manufacturing is lessening, or where just 
so much manufacturing is done, this might be the 
case ; but in the South, where the mills and manufac- 
tories within the last ten years have been multiplied to 
an unprecedented extent, where labor is needed as it 
never was before, there will be no question but that 
the intelligent Negro artisan will be in demand. 
Every intelligent workingman in the South can make 
a living. We of the South who understand the vast 
possibilities of the South scarcely appreciate what we 
have done and what we are doing. We have been so 



THe Race Qxiestion 107 

engaged in building the Soutli from its desolation that 
we have scarcely understood what an advance it has 
made in the commercial and manufacturing aflfairs of 
the world. It is only by comparison that we can see 
the wonderful opportunities for absorbing every par- 
ticle of intelligent labor in the South. This commercial 
increase came slowly, but to-day it is increasing in 
arithmetical progression. 

I will be pardoned if I give some plain figures of 
comparison made by Mr. Richard Edmonds, the greatest 
living master of Southern commercial conditions. The 
mere statement will enable us to appreciate the advance 
of the South and its marvellous growing ability to 
absorb all labor. 

THE SOUTH— YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY. 

1880. 1899. 

Railroad mileage .... 

Cotton crops, bales 

Cotton consumption in Southern 
mills, bales .... 

Capital invested in Southern manu- 
facturing .... 1257,200,000 $1,000,000,000 

Grain produced, bushels . 431,000,000 736,600,000 

Value of Southern mfg. products, 1457,400,000 |i,5oo,ooo,ooo 

Wages paid to factory hands in 

South 175,000,000 $350,000,000 

Capital invested in cotton-seed-oil 

manufacturing . . , $3,500,000 $40,000,000 

Pig-iron produced, tons . . 397,000 2,500,000 

Coal mined, tons .... 6,000,000 40,000,000 

As a distinguished editor in the South well says, 
the increased prosperity that would come to the South 



20,600 


50,000 


1,750,000 


11,199,000 


233,006 


1,231,000 



io8 Some SoxitKern Questions 

could her idle Negroes be put to work would make 
place on a higher plane of employment for millions of 
white men, 

I will say here that, as a matter of fact, whilst much 
has been done for the Negro, much of it has been badly 
done. For ten or fifteen years after his emancipation, 
lie was largely in the hands of people who were using 
him for political effect. He was in a period of transi- 
tion. He was disturbed in bod}- and mind, his whole 
environment had been changed, and, I think, consider- 
ing the vast disadvantages under which he has worked, 
that we see in him a bright hope that he will be uplifted 
and upbuilt, and become a useful, practical, and neces- 
sary member of the body politic. Dr. Mayo and Dr. 
Curry are the greatest of authorities upon this work, 
and Dr. Curry well says : "Of the desire of the col- 
ored people for education the proof is conclusive, of 
their capacity to receive mental color there is not the 
shadow of a reason to support an adverse hypothesis." 

Dr. Mayo arrives at the same conclusion. 

In conclusion, I will say that the problem will be 
worked out by the South. Wise men believe that the 
greatest danger is over. It seems the boundary limit 
has been passed. There is no question but that the 
races are greatly improved by daily contact with each 
other. There is a kindly feeling on both sides in all 
of the interests of life which are not racial and in- 
herent. The racial distinction will be and should be per- 
manent. In the business relations there is no question 



TKe Race Qxaestion. io0 

about a vast improvement and a desire on the part of 
each race to live and to let live. Each race is beginning 
to learn the true status of separate and race livelihood. 
Each race is beginning to understand that there are 
inherent and social antagonisms which cannot be over- 
stepped. This makes a vast advance. When this has 
been understood the relationship has been in every 
way improved. In addition to this our Northern 
friends no longer concern themselves with interfering 
with social affairs between the two races in the South. 
They understand that these matters the South will 
settle for herself From the situation she is better 
able to settle them. This is redounding to the better 
relations of the two races. The idea of non-interference 
with the social status of the South will be vigorously 
insisted upon by the South, and this is being under- 
stood thoroughly in the North. I would be bold and 
arrogant and indeed foolish did I presumptuously 
suggest the plan which I have outlined as the only 
solution of the Race Question. Any man may seem 
presumptuous when he discusses the future of the 
Negro Question. With the lights before me it seems 
in the present state of evolution the most feasible plan. 
I do, however, know this with all my heart, that the 
education of the Negro, the making him better and 
more intelligent, and withholding the ballot from him 
until he has evolved himself into an intelligent citizen, 
is certainly the best plan for the present. Without look- 
ing into the future we know what is best for the present. 



no Some SoxitHern Qviestions 

This plan seems less attended with diflficulties than any 
other. With this general idea it will take years of 
patience and mutual forbearance. This is the greatest 
social question which has confronted any nation, and 
will not be settled without much travail, without many 
discouragements, and only by a long process of time. 
Neither the white man nor the negro is perfect, but I 
earnestly believe that the evolution of this great ques- 
tion and its full and complete settlement under the 
Providence of God will come in its own time and will 
conclude to the ultimate glory of our country. 



in 



THK ATTITUDK OF THE PROGRESSIVE 
SOUTH 

WHEN your courteous note of invitation to ad- 
dress this splendid assembly of workers for 
our country came to my home in the South, 
my first impulse, after making full obeisance to you, was 
to continue in the shadow of my mountains as one not 
fitted by education or opportunity to discuss commerce 
with the Masters of Trade. Yet, sir, the significance of 
the event hurried my memory to other days long past, 
and whispered that in this day of coming change no good 
man, however humble, should turn his face away from 
the rising sun or withhold his hand from the plough. The 
son of a Southern soldier conferring with the men of the 
North as to what is best for the Republic, with naught of 
unkindness for the North, with naught of selfishness for 
the South, but only with love and kindness for each, 
and the welfare of the Republic crowning and glorify- 
ing all, fills me with emotions too sacred for expression, 
and well assures me that, amidst the grave imaginings 
of harm and hurtfiil change, the Republic is founded on 
eternal foundations and that its glory and permanence 
are secure. Ah, sir, when citizens hold before my eyes 



112 Some SoxitKern Qxiestions 

that which they anxiously believe to be the hem of the 
Imperial Robe, my mind, for its inspiration for steady 
belief in the Republic, flies swiftly back to Old Vir- 
ginia, my boyhood home. There rise before me the 
Blue Mountains of the Great Valley, crowned with 
the autumn sunlight and reflecting from their broad 
shoulders their kaleidoscopic glory of orange and green 
and flame ov'er hill, river, and town. 

Sir, it is God's own footstool. Amidst its mountains 
and in its valleys live a high-spirited people who have 
always prized liberty above other blessings. They are 
God-fearing, and from the mountain clifis and the 
shades of the valley the evening prayer arises from 
happy homes, and only Freedom's call to arms can 
stop their songs of praise. It is a land of fatness, of 
rich meadow, of noble homes, with schools and colleges 
to crown the work. 

Yet, on this beautiful day, there is no fatness in the 
land. The sun falls lovingly on the broad, winding 
river and beautiful valley, but the homes are blackened 
desolations, and from their sightless windows and 
broken walls stare want and grisly despair. The torch 
has marked its fiery way across the broad valley, and 
the smoking ruins are the sentinels standing guard 
over the desolate fields. The schoolhouses and col- 
leges have disappeared with the homes, and the govern- 
ment is in the hands of aliens. The widow's weeds 
cast a shadow over every household, and the cry of the 
fatherless is as frequent as the whispering of the winds. 



A.ttit\ide of tKe Progressive SovitK 113 

The little mounds are in every valley and on every hill- 
side, and the Gods of the Household, with sighs and 
sobbings, covering their sorrowing eyes, have taken 
flight to happier scenes. 

On this far away autumn day in the South, after the 
war, was the real danger time to the Republic. If the 
South, in despair and insidious hate, more dangerous 
to the Republic than its armed legions, had perma- 
nently fallen away from its love of its traditions of the 
Republic, and had instilled this feeling in the hearts of 
the coming generation, surely within time we would 
have seen the disintegration of this government. Sir, 
it did not. On the day when in the little town nestling 
in the mountains we buried Robert E. I^ee, we turned 
our faces towards the open day and gave our lives and 
our souls towards re-creating the broken homes,building 
up the desolated places, and tying together with hearts 
of love this great republican government. Then, Mr. 
Chairman, if the South can forget her woes and sor- 
rows and desolation, and if the North and South, 
casting behind them the old days and the old enmities, 
can, in one short life, heal up the last trace of the 
greatest conflict the world ever witnessed, how idle 
does it appear to me, how infinitely idle, to see the de- 
struction of free government and the ruin of the nation 
in the enlarging of our commerce and the extending of 
the civilization of our Republic ! 

The times are changing, must change. The isolation 
which is not alone the result of the policy inaugurated 



114 Some SovatKem Qxiestions 

by the Fathers, but caused rather by the close local 
attention demanded by the development of our own 
country, cannot continue to be the polic)^ most benefi- 
cial to our people. There has been heretofore no need 
to look over the sea into foreign lands for employment 
for our busy hands. Our rich mines heretofore have 
waited only for the touch of the pick to pour their 
golden flood into the lap of him who took for the find- 
ing. The rich and bounteous lands of the South and 
West are no longer waiting for the coming of the 
husbandman to bless him with their fatness and crown 
him with their glory of waving grain kissed into ripe- 
ness by the soft sun of our blessed land. Where but 
a generation ago there was the solitude of the prairie 
land, to-day the household gods watch over the fortunes 
of myriads of happy people. The prattle of children at 
play and the laugh of the contented workman as he 
drives the flying shuttle to and fro, weaving into the 
web and woof of his life his love of country, is heard 
where but the span of a short life was the lair of the 
wild beast and the sporting place of the wilder man. 
At the ocean side, on the rich plain, by the river, and 
under the mountain, are all the tremendous forces of 
the Republic at their mighty work. New conditions 
are arising, and necessarily should arise, under the 
powerful demands of a virile people, strengthened by 
the potent influence of the most progressive civiliza- 
tion which has been known to mankind. The policy 
of isolation, political and mercantile, died with the 



A-ttitvide of tHe Progressive SovitH 115 

white sails of the ship, the filling of the prairie with 
homes, and by the production created by the energy of 
nearly a hundred millions of people at work. It died 
when the South turned the quiet fields into the manu- 
factory and its villages into bustling cities. Its requiem 
was sung by the hurrying locomotive, the whispering 
telephone, the whirling propeller of the steamship, 
by the crowded manufactory which in six months' 
work can furnish sufficient for the needs of the whole 
5'ear, by the grand contest between the civilizations 
of the East and the West, and above all by the Mace- 
donian cry of the peoples of the earth, "come over 
and help us." 

To those who see Roman triumplis and the flowing 
purple of the Imperial Robe in the widening of our 
commercial power to other lands and the extension of 
our civilization to broader fields, we simply answer 
that the immortal Virginian who penned the code of 
free government, when he added to our domain the 
mighty Louisiana land, was impeached in high places 
for casting the shadow of the Imperial Eagle over the 
land and giving the liberties of the people to its cruel 
beak. The little fringe along the Atlantic has added 
the flood of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the 
Oregon to its domain. The will-o'-the-wisp and the 
glowworm light our flag at night under the palms of 
Florida, and by day its folds are touched by the sweet 
airs ladened with the incense of the orange and mag- 
nolia. Our Constitution is the highest law to the 



ii6 Some SoiatHern Qxiestions 

people of the Pacific, and from the banks of the Potomac 
they receive its highest interpretation. Yet, notwith- 
standing this glory of added domain, the Constitution 
has not been wrenched, nor has its rich inheritance of 
freedom been invaded. The glory of the lyord has 
surely been about and around this people. Here are the 
most exalted civilization, the purest Christianity, the 
most advanced science, the most absolute civil freedom 
which the world ever saw. The conditions are happier 
for us than they are for any other people. Justice is 
not bought or sold, nor held by the strong, but is for 
the rich and the poor. The citizen, enlightened and 
upheld by the genius of his country, is his own 
ruler, and in that no man can gainsay him. The 
workman, however humble, is a king in his own 
house, and only to the law of the land does he owe 
any allegiance. 

But are these great blessings for us alone? Shall 
Ethiopia in vain stretch out her arms to us, and shall 
we turn away from the people in the shadows of the 
forests ? Shall we not give as well as receive ? Shall 
we remain at home and invite the rigid conditions, so- 
cial and industrial, which inevitably come to a people 
living within itself ? The most convincing argument 
that the great Instrument was made for broad condi- 
tions is that, although the domain under its provisions 
has widened and increased beyond the dreams of those 
who sat at its birth, yet still it has easily met every 
condition, and under its power seventy millions of 



A-ttitvide of tKe Progressive SoiatK 117 

people dwell in happiness and peace. In dwarfing 
that great instrument, in minimizing its wide provi- 
sions, in restricting and narrowing its interpretations 
so as to correspond with the horizon of some of them 
who affect to be entirely guided by its provisions, lies 
the conservatism which will work more real harm to 
the world and to the people than the radicalism so 
much appealed to and so lavishly criticised. The ex- 
cess of conservatism is more to be feared than the 
radicalism, for the good common sense of the American 
people will sternly repress any radicalism which really 
threatens the permanence of our institutions. When 
by the fortunes of war or by honest purchase, new 
lands and people become subject to its provisions, 
surely we can give them the freedom, the liberal in- 
stitutions, and the local self-government guaranteed 
to us by our Constitution. I appreciate, sir, that I have 
been late in announcing the specific text of my dis- 
cussion. Appreciating that the question of greatest 
importance to-day is the question of Foreign Trade 
and Foreign Markets, it seems to me that it is of pe- 
culiar interest to you to know the position of the South 
upon this important question. It would not be becom- 
ing on this occasion for me to occupy your time with 
any matter of detail, and I will only attempt to 
generally indicate to you the position of the pro- 
gressive South on the great questions which are 
to-day paramount in the commercial affairs of 
the American people. I take much pleasure in 



ii8 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

presenting a few suggestions for thought on the 
lines of — 

The Attitude of the Progressive South towards the Meas- 
ures for promoting the Co7m try's Foreign Trade ; 
what the Country, ajid especially the Norths will gain 
from the South' s aid in viaking these Measures 
effective; and what the South is to expect in return 
for such aid. 

The first question of absolute importance to-day to 
the North is the matter of the foreign markets. It is 
supreme in its importance to the whole people. We 
cannot longer live within ourselves, and such is the 
situation that, if the American people propose to as- 
sume their required position in the great foreign trade, 
they must grasp these markets. In a short time the 
opportunity will be lost, and our civilization will 
be restricted and our productive powers must be 
lessened. 

Where are the markets which are necessary to this 
country's commercial progress, and what is the posi- 
tion of the South as to obtaining and holding them ? 
First, of critical importance is the market of the 
Empire of China. This is the market for which 
Russia, Germany, Britain, and France, with all of 
their energies, are contending. Here is the most im- 
portant market of the globe, and a market of peculiar 
importance to us in that it needs about everything we 
manufacture. Here are three hundred and fifty mil- 



Attitude of tKe Progressive SovitH 119 

lions of people who have just begun their development 
of civilization and trade. To-da\^, without organized 
eflFort, we sell them twenty-five million dollars per year, 
and within a short time we will make it seventy-five 
million dollars. That means much to you. The mind 
can scarcely comprehend our interests in this trade 
when we consider our opportunities in an empire of 
four million square miles, inhabited by an energetic 
people just opening their eyes to civilization. There 
is scarcely an article which you manufacture in Newark 
which cannot be sold in China. Think for a moment 
of an empire of this vast extent with less than four 
hundred miles of railroad. You have more than that 
amount in the city of Newark. In the matter of rail- 
road building, we can undersell any other country. 
As an illustration of the opportunities of trade, they 
are to-day arranging to construct twenty thousand 
miles of railroad which will cost four hundred millions 
of dollars, and a vast part of this work should be in the 
hands of this country. Great cities are being built in 
Northern China. Here are the termini of the longest 
line of railroad in the world. Within a short time in 
this new territory, the American locomotive has under- 
sold those of every other country, and this year China 
has purchased fi-om you and the South about eleven 
millions of dollars of cotton. Here are fast developing 
the great cotton markets of the world. These peo- 
ple need everything we manufacture. Already we 
have built up a great trade in cottons, machinery. 



I20 Some SoutHem Qviestions 

leather goods, electric goods, chemicals, railroad equip- 
ment, tools, hardware, and the general products of our 
workshops. At the present rate of progress, our trade 
with China will, in fifteen years, be the most important 
of any trade in the world. With the short time at my 
disposal, it would be impossible to discuss it specifically. 
Here, sir, within twenty-five years, will be the world's 
field of trade. "We deal with China through treaty 
rights, and these treaty rights are in jeopard5% To- 
day the mercantile nations of the world, Russia, 
Germany, England, and France, appreciating the 
marvellous possibilities of this great country, have 
established zones of control, which practically means 
that the United States, if she desires the markets of 
China, must come hat in hand and take the crumbs 
which fall from the table. I will add that from the 
table of the Lion, the Bear, and the Eagle fall but few 
crumbs. Under the vigorous policy of the State De- 
partment, arrangements, which are practically tempo- 
rary, have been efiected by which the door is not yet 
closed to us. We demand a vigorous policy which will 
be permanent in its effect, under which the rights of 
this country shall be preserved and under which the 
markets of China shall not be turned over to European 
nations as their own exclusive property, but shall be 
held alike on terms of absolute equality for the citizens 
of the United States. In this demand the South is 
urgent and insistent, and her greatest manufacturing 
organization has just demanded that the trade door of 



-Attitvide of tKe Progressive SovitH 121 

China should be kept wide open to the markets of the 
world. 

Now, sir, we are face to face with the great question, 
How shall we keep open to our country the door of the 
great Chinese and Eastern market ? There is but one 
door for us and that is through the Philippine Islands. 
Here is the real strategical and commercial position of 
the East. Every Eastern market can be reached far 
more easily through these islands than from any other 
position. Shanghai and Hongkong, through which 
cities England has established her great trade, offer no 
such position for commercial success as do the Philip- 
pines. It gives control of the great northern and 
central coast of China, with its teeming, active popula- 
tion. It puts us in a position to grasp through them the 
markets of Japan with its forty millions of energetic peo- 
ple and its annual foreign trade of two hundred and fifty 
million dollars. The great coast line of the Philippine 
Islands of eight hundred miles practically dominates 
the northern coast of China, capable of a foreign trade 
of a billion dollars per year. We have less than ten 
per cent, of the Eastern trade, which amounts to two 
billion dollars per 5'ear, and our possibilities are ap- 
parent to every one. On this coast to-day are the 
greatest commercial activities extant. Manila can 
easily become, and will become, the distributing centre 
of the Eastern world. Here every commercial condi- 
tion is at its best. Within a radius of twenty-five 
hundred miles we reach every great trade centre in 



122 Some SoutKern Qviestions 

the East and Australia. From this broad harbor our 
country will be mistress of the Eastern civilization as 
she is of the Western. In the islands for a century to 
come there is a field for the restless energies of our 
people, which, in our own country, will soon be denied 
to them. The foreign trade of these islands, which is 
now about thirty-five millions, under the vigorous 
vitalization of our people, will, according to the best 
experts, amount in five years to one hundred and fifty 
millions. In these islands abound the products needed 
for mankind, and it is the richest undeveloped territory 
yet remaining on earth. Holding no position in the 
East but that of a country having a treaty with an 
empire whose dismemberment has begun, our victory 
at Manila and the subsequent treaty gave to us a 
political and commercial position in the East which has 
heretofore been denied us. It prevented the dismem- 
berment of the Empire of China, and it has given us 
the right of an open door to her markets. Without 
our position in the Philippines our commercial treaties 
with China would be valueless, and upon our with- 
drawal from those islands the Chinese Empire would 
not last a month, and its rich market would be forever 
lost to the people of this country. Without obtruding 
a political discussion upon this occasion, I say, very 
frankly, for I am used to plain speech, that, what- 
ever may be the views of party, the commercial and 
business people of this nation have no intention of 
turning over this last great commercial Gibraltar to 



Attitude of tHe Progressive SovitK 123 

tlie Imperial Eagle of Germany whicli so impatiently 
awaits it. 

The real sentiment of the people is illustrated by 
what occurred in my home last month. The son of a 
Southern soldier, a man of my name and blood, limped 
into my home with a Filipino bullet in his thigh. 
When I discussed with him the question of our giving 
up possession and control of the Philippines he signifi- 
cantly remarked, ' ' The United States has never yet 
given up that for which she has fought, and certainly 
never that for which she has both fought and paid." 
I do not understand that our maintaining a commercial 
and political interest in these islands is incompatible 
with the fullest freedom for its inhabitants. Many who 
oppose our retaining any interest in these islands seem 
to imply that our retention of them is for the purpose 
alone of establishing a tyranny over the inhabitants. 
I find that thoughtful men are in favor of establishing 
the jurisdiction of our government, giving the Filipinos 
full control of their local affairs when they are able to 
manage them, and allowing them the highest measure 
of liberty, such liberty as they have never enjoyed, and 
such as they will not enjoy if our flag should be re- 
moved therefrom. To leave the islands is to turn them 
over to anarchy or to the German Imperial Govern- 
ment. Neither one of these conditions will be contem- 
plated by the American people. Our people will work 
out the question according to good sense and in such 
manner as will give the Filipinos the fullest liberty 



124 Some SovitHern Qviestions 

and yet retain for our government such political and 
commercial powers as will allow us to control the trade 
of the Pacific and the Far East and forever hold the 
great door of China wide open so that through its 
majestic portals will flow into the East the religion, the 
arts, and the genius of the newest and best civilization 
which has ever blessed mankind. 

Now, as to the position of the South on this last 
great qutstion. What have been her traditions? 
Those who suggest that the South has been ultra- 
conservative as to the widening of the sphere of this 
country's influence do not know her traditions. As to 
her action in the future, I confidently refer you to her 
past. It would be but trite for me to say that the 
acquisition of our additional domain, excepting Alaska, 
was all by the practically solid vote of the South, and 
excepting the acquisition of Texas, under President 
Filmore, it was all acquired under the presidency of 
Southern men. In 1809 and 1810, Mr. Jefferson and 
Mr. Madison, both men of the South, began the move- 
ment for the acquisition of Cuba and its incorporation 
into this government, and such was the settled and 
persistent policy of the South as long as she had influ- 
ence in public afiairs. As to the position of the pro- 
gressive South, it is voiced by the Southern Cotton 
Spinners' Association, which demands in vigorous 
terms the closing of the Philippine question, in order 
that its markets and the markets of China may be fully 
open to our trade and commerce. 



A-ttitxide of tHe Progressive SovitK 125 

However rich and magnificent these markets may 
be, if a competitor has cheaper access thereto you re- 
ceive no benefit. Of the great Far East market I have 
just spoken. There is another market which next to 
China is most important to us to control, that is the 
market of South and Central America. In the Far 
East and in South and Central America five hundred 
millions of people are waiting for the products of our 
abundant energy. Corea, Siam, China, the Philippine 
Islands, Japan, South America, and the Islands of the 
Sea desire your merchandise ; and these markets must 
be reached by a cheaper route than around Cape Horn. 
England, by the completion of the Suez Canal, has the 
advantage in trade routes. Within twenty years, by 
the building of that canal, she has doubled her com- 
merce to the East. 

The building of the Nicaraguan Canal will be of 
infinitely more advantage to the American people than 
the Suez Canal has been to the British. It will place 
each of these great markets nearer to your manufac- 
tories than they are to Liverpool or London. With 
this canal completed, you can grasp in your strong 
hands the splendid markets of Central America and 
Western South America, and no one can compete 
therein with you. The American manufacturer can 
turn out his product, man for man, cheaper than can 
the English, and thus, with shorter distance to the 
markets, you have the advantage over England. Be- 
tween London and Canton, the Suez Canal saves you 



126 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

three thousand three hundred miles, while the Nicara- 
guan Canal saves you from five to eight thousand miles 
on every voyage. Between London and San Francisco 
it saves only seven thousand miles, whilst between 
Newark and San Francisco it saves ten thousand miles 
out of a total of fourteen thousand eight hundred. 
With the canal completed, you will be seven thousand 
miles nearer to the rich markets of Western South 
America than you are to-day, and have that much 
advantage over Britain and your European competitors. 
Observe the trade to China, which is worth twenty-five 
millions of dollars. To make this voyage, it takes 
one hundred and seventy days by sail. By the canal, 
it will take less than one hundred days by sail and 
less than forty days by steam. Reverse the condition 
which the Suez Canal gives England, and your peer- 
less shoes, your splendid machinery, your locomotives 
and cars, your iron and steel, your pottery, your cotton 
and woollen goods, and the thousands of products of 
your manufactories would, to a large extent, occupy 
the place of England's products. From Newark to 
Melbourne, it is, by Cape Horn, thirteen thousand five 
hundred miles ; by the canal it is ten thousand miles, 
a saving of three thousand five hundred miles. It will 
give us the advantage over England in distance to the 
Japanese market. It will place us nearer to Northern 
China than will be our great rival. If, with a long voy- 
age, we have made the vast strides in China's trade, 
which excited the surprise of Lord Beresford, the British 



A-ttitude of tKe Progressive SoxjtK 127 

Commissioner to China, with all of the added advantages 
of distance with us, how long would it be until you could 
practically have the whole advantage in that great mar- 
ket ? If the canal would cost you two hundred millions 
of dollars, it would increase our trade with our Western 
coast twenty-five million dollars at once. The lowest es- 
timate would give us an equal amount per year with 
Western South America. In addition to these markets, 
here will be the opportunity to stand face to face with five 
hundred millions of people who want our products, and 
in every case we would have the advantage of distance 
over England. Was there ever such an opportunity 
for trade ? Shall we grasp our opportunities and take 
our future within our own hands and practically control 
the trade of the Far East and South ? It will increase 
our output and add to our factories. It will give a 
trade which will grow as your knowledge of the 
markets grow, and, as the people of the world become 
acquainted with your products, it will open the 
shipyards and will send the American sailors to every 
market of the universe. In this great question of such 
vital interest to you, what is the position of the South ? 
I reply that the father of the Canal legislation, who for 
years has stood sponsor for this great work, is a South- 
ern Senator ; and in Congress, the vote of the South, 
with her whole influence, is being solidly exerted to 
complete this great work. The South has never fal- 
tered and no interest has ever interfered with her 
persistent desire to see this great work completed by 



128 Some SoiatKern Questions 

American hands and for the glory of American 
commerce. 

To successfully carry out these great policies and 
control these markets we must have our own merchant 
marine. With our vast preponderance in manufactur- 
ing and productive ability it is a sad commentary upon 
the mercantile laws of the land which give to England, 
our great rival, the practical carrying trade of the 
world. The merchant marine is as important to our 
country as the manufacturing interest. No country 
can become a great carrying power unless it is a great 
ship-building country ; and no country can control the 
markets of the world unless it commands the means of 
reaching those markets. The immense sum which we 
pay year by year to foreign carriers should, by liberal 
laws in the future, be paid to our own people. The 
presence of the distinguished Chairman of the Commit- 
tee on Commerce in the House of Representatives, who 
is to follow me, will not allow a prolonged discussion 
of this great question by me. As to the South, I only 
wish to add that she is earnestly in favor of liberal laws 
which will increase the American merchant marine. 
Many of you are in favor of the subsidy idea. Some of 
our progressive Southern people are in favor of discrimi- 
nating duties. My want of familiarity with the subject 
will not allow me to say what is the best policy for our 
country to adopt in order that we shall have a mer- 
chant marine commensurate with our great commercial 
interests. In the South we are in favor of some liberal 



Attitude of tKe Progressive South 129 

maritime policy which will allow us the influence in the 
commercial markets of the world which is called for by 
our great interests. We must control our carrying 
trade, and the progressive South will join earnestly in 
any fair policy which will encourage our again becom- 
ing a great ship-owning, ship-building, and carrying 
power. It is an anomaly in commerce to attempt to take 
away the markets from England and use English ships 
to accomplish the result. 

Another and most potent element of the successful 
foreign trade is a powerfiil navy, not for purposes of 
war, but for purposes of trade. England's annual 
budget is more than repaid by the vastly increased 
trade given her by the influence of her navy. A great 
manufacturer of mill machinery informed me that his 
agent had tried for months to close a large bill in a 
South American city. In despair he had about given 
up further attempt when the accidental coming into 
port of one of our finest war-ships closed the contract 
in three days. The great Eastern and Southern trade 
is most peculiarly afiected by exhibitions of power and 
permanence. As the honorable John Barrett says, be- 
fore Manila it was expected that an American merchant 
to sell a bill of goods must keep his hat in his hand 
when dealing with the people who were afiected by the 
importance of Great Britain and France as evidenced 
by exhibitions of naval power. 

The South wishes a navy sufficiently powerful to 
insure this country respect on every sea and in every 
9 



13° Some So\itHern Questions 

clime. We want a navj^ so strong that when an Ameri- 
can citizen sells goods in a foreign land where the laws 
of trade are loose, as they are in many Eastern coun- 
tries, that the moral effect of a good navy will see that 
they are paid for value for value. We want a navy 
which will make the world understand that wherever an 
American citizen may be, in whatever country he may 
be trading, that this country is sufficiently powerful to 
protect him in all his rights and privileges. The South 
wants a navy sufficiently strong to let the world know 
that by no harsh or unfair interpretation of any coun- 
try's laws, can the rights and liberties of an American 
citizen be violated with impunity. Ah, sir, we ask for 
the spirit of the old navy. Do you remember in 1853 
the action of Captain Ingraham of the United States 
war-ship Sf. Louis in the foreign port of Smyrna ? It 
makes the heart of an American citizen thrill when he 
reads the narrative. Martin Koszta, an American citi- 
zen, was imprisoned by the Austrian authorities and 
taken on board an Austrian ship of war which lay, 
with its consort, within a short distance of the St. 
Louis. The Austrian force was more than twice that 
of the American. To Captain Ingraham' s request that 
Koszta be released no reply was made. A second 
request was made for his release by the American 
captain. Again it was ignored. Then rising to the 
measure of his great responsibility, manning a ship's 
boat, he sent a message to the Austrian commander 
that if Martin Koszta was not on board the American 



Attitude of tKe Progressive SoxitK 131 

ship within one hour he would open fire. A half-hour 
passed. The anchor was weighed ; the ship was 
put in trim for action. " Clear the quarter deck," 
came ringing from the American ship. Fifteen 
minutes only remained. " I^oad the guns and open 
the ports," was the next order. Ten minutes more 
ran their precious course. ' ' Man the guns, ' ' came 
next. The black guns, double shotted, were run out. 
Complete preparation was made, the quarter deck was 
cleared, and every man, ready for the defence of his 
countryman, waited command. Captain Ingraham, 
with watch in hand, stood on the deck, the imper- 
sonification of the genius of Americanism. When the 
hands of the watch pointed to five minutes of the hour 
a boat was seen to put out from the Austrian ship, and 
within a minute of the time when with shot and shell 
the rights of American citizenship would have been 
protected, Martin Koszta, an American citizen, free 
and unharmed, stepped on the deck of the American 
man-of-war. That is the spirit of the navy we want. 
We desire the world to understand that we possess the 
ability to see the fullest protection accorded to American 
citizens and American interests. I wish to say, Mr. 
Chairman, that as an illustration of the South' s devo- 
tion to American commercial interests that the new 
navy was largely constructed under bills introduced 
and pushed by a Southern man ; that the largest num- 
ber of vessels were added under the secretaryship of 
a Southern man, and that the laying of the keel of the 



132 Some So\jtHern Questions 

cruiser named in honor of your beautiful city was by 
the direct work of a Southern man, then the chairman 
of the Naval Committee, and that the money which is 
needed by Congress to rebuild our great navy will be 
appropriated by the solid vote of a solid South. 'The 
South wants the navy yet stronger and will continue 
her policy to that end. 

The Canal, with our commerce flowing through it, 
must be protected from the Gulf of Mexico and the 
Caribbean Sea just as jealously as England guards 
the Suez Canal from Aden, from Malta, and from 
Gibraltar ; and the opportunities for this generation are 
such as will never again come without the tears and 
blood of the nation being poured out like rain. This is 
vital to our commerce. Above the cry of the dema- 
gogue striving for place, higher than the behest of party 
seeking advantage, there is a great and solemn view to 
be taken by this people, and that is the protection of 
our commerce in the very heart of our civilization. 

The control of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean 
Sea is essential to our commerce. Without these seas 
under our control , we will have built a beautiful house 
and left the door wide open with the rich jewels in full 
view of those who wish to take them. In this demand 
the South for one hundred years has urgently persisted. 
Says Napoleon, as colossal in his mastery of trade as 
of war, "Whatever nation holds the Mississippi and 
the Gulf of Mexico would be the most powerftil on 
earth." It is looking forward; but, as a great writer 



A.ttit\jde of tHe Progressive SoiatK 133 

has well said, this generation is but a trustee for the 
next, and when the nations of the earth are moving up 
their pickets and advancing the vanguard of commerce, 
trade, and power, this nation is the trustee of the gen- 
eration succeeding at an awful moment. When once 
the canal is built, the outposts of European commerce 
will have advanced to our very doors, and whilst the 
great commercial power of the world is to-day our 
friend, the portentous warning of the Father of his 
country as to the instability of the friendship of nations 
should be heeded. 

Here, at the mouth of the Mississippi, is garnered 
the wealth of the Great Valley, and through the Gulf 
of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea every vessel, ladened 
with the products of your manufactories, must take its 
way to the East and the South. Here your cottons, 
your woollens, your iron products, your thousand pro- 
ducts of loom and manufactory of the North will meet 
the rare woods, rich spices, indigo, quinine, the India- 
rubber, the coffee, the sugar, and the cocoa of the rich 
valley of South America and the varied products from 
the Far East. In these two seas, the Mediterranean 
of America, meet and commingle the mighty floods 
of the Amazon and the Mississippi with their products 
so essential to our civilization. We should absolutely 
dominate these seas. Here will be the centre of the 
greatest maritime trade in the world. The islands of 
these seas will be supreme over the richest territory in 
the world, the heart and centre of the United States, 



134 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

the great valley of the Mississippi. Interference with 
its trade means ruin to the trade in Newark as well as to 
New Orleans. Every entrance and every passage of 
these seas are controlled by the islands of Hayti and 
Jamaica. From the security of her great harbor Eng- 
land can easily destroy your trade through the Canal. 
Thirty years hence, with our hundred millions of people, 
the arresting of our commerce for a month will mean 
hunger and want. Should not the nation contemplate at 
an early day the purchase and control of the island of 
Jamaica, and the control of the island of Hayti ? To- 
day, I boldly say it, every reason of humanity, of busi- 
ness, or political statesmanship, demands our control 
of the island of Hayti. Once the richest of France's 
possessions, teeming with natural advantages only 
given to few lands, with fertile soil, rich forests, pre- 
cious minerals, and a glorious climate, situated strate- 
gically so that it can easily control the entrance of the 
Caribbean Sea, lying between the island of Cuba and 
our island of Puerto Rico, it should be a paradise. 

Notwithstanding these surpassing advantages, with 
the very air surrounding it filled with the genius of 
our civilization, humanity weeps when it contemplates 
the barbarous horrors enacted daily within this beau- 
tiful island. Voodooism, with its nameless horror and 
shame ; cannibalism, so open that the offenders are not 
tried; religion, almost a mockery; free government, a 
laughable travesty were it not for its bloody horrors ; 
murder of the citizens without trial or jury; bloody 



AttitMcle of tHe Progressive SovitK 135 

revolutions as frequent as the rains ; the brutal Soulou- 
que, the horrible Hippolyte, the crafty and fierce 
Heureaux, bloody, red-handed tyrants masquerading 
under the form of free government, compose the shock- 
ing scenes of the horrid panorama. I repeat that the 
horrors of sufifering Cuba are more than equalled in 
their intensity and terror by the bloody dramas which, 
for the last fifty years, have been and are being enacted 
in the island of Hayti. 

Then, sir, I suggest that the highest exercise of 
humanity, buttressed by a statesmanship looking to 
the control of the natural seat of the world's com- 
merce, demands our absolute dominance of the Gulf 
of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. To absolutely con- 
trol these islands should be our policy. To protect our 
rich Southern seacoasts and harbors and to hold in 
our hands these great seas and their islands is and has 
ever been the policy of the Southern statesman, and 
notably that of Mr. Jeflferson. 

In a necessarily hurried manner, Mr. Chairman, I 
have attempted merely to call attention to the great 
questions which are to-day confronting the American 
commercial interests, and which affect the life of this 
great Republic, as it has now reached the period in its 
life when its busy people cannot consume that which 
is manufactured in its workshops. It is a critical 
period, and the question for us to consider is whether 
we will grasp the great markets within our hand and 
thus have plenty and prosperity, or whether we will 



136 Some SoxitHern Questions 

continue at home and contest among ourselves for the 
manufacture and sale of that which we alone consume. 

What will be the effect of the consummation of these 
great policies upon the country when, through the 
steady influence and help of the South, they have been 
carried to their full and complete fruition ? My plain 
words cannot paint the glory of our marvellous civiliza- 
tion. The East and the West will then have joined 
their hands and the sweet mercies of the reign of Him 
who loves all men will, through our civilization, be 
offered to those who are to-day in darkness. For com- 
merce is the greatest of missionaries and trade the 
greatest civilizer. Our own beautiful country will 
know no North and no South, no East nor no West, 
but all will be joined together by the eternal bonds of a 
busy and prosperous commercial life which has bound 
together beyond the question of division every section 
of this mighty Union. The seas of the world will be 
white with our sails and the laugh of the American 
sailor will be heard in every port known to trade. The 
blessings of your commerce will touch alike the dwellers 
under the snows of the North and under the warm sun 
of the Tropics. Prosperity will reign here in our land 
and millions of our citizens, prosperous, happy, and 
contented, will be sending the products of their tireless 
energies to other lands and other seas. 

The broad avenues of j-our beautiful city, bordered 
with the ladened warehouses crowded with the rich 
stuffs and precious wares and strange peoples, will 



Attitvide of tHe Progressive SoxitK 137 

stretch their imperial length to your broad bay. Your 
river widened and the bay deepened by our Southern 
help and vote will bear on their proud bosoms the fleets 
of the Orient and Occident. The rich spices, the precious 
woods, and the fruits of South America will here find 
their best market. The curious wares and useful pro- 
ducts of Asia, Africa, and the Islands of the Sea will 
crowd your wharves, and the white cotton, the corn, 
and the oil from my own rich South will pay their 
honest tribute to the glory of your city. The crown of 
the city will be the commerce of all the nations. Peo- 
ples from the far lands of the world will crowd your 
splendid colleges and schools to learn from you the 
teachings of our marvellous civilization. Instead of 
your thousand manufactories, the now silent flats will 
glow with forge and shop. Where the loon sounds its 
lonesome call and the gull wings his lazy flight, will 
be heard the shuttle as it flies and the click and rattle 
of shop and the roar of crowded railroad. Here will be 
witnessed the true greatness of a free people, not meas- 
ured by battles or war, but by a constitution-loving 
people carrying its liberal laws, its intelligence, its 
energy, to the dark places of the world and reverently 
giving to a constitution, untouched by imperialism or 
kingship, unbroken in letter or spirit, the tribute of a 
people who, under God, ascribe to that glorious cove- 
nant of their liberties all the blessings which have 
crowned their work. 

When in my vision I see the greatness of the city, 



138 Some SovitKern Questions 

the Orchard of the Pines rises to my view, the sweet 
lake and the soft sun, with Ben Hur and Sheik Ilderem 
gently pressing each other with gifts. "Think what 
thou hast done for me. All the spears now masterless 
will come to me, and my sword hands multiply past 
counting. Thou dost not know what it is to have 
sway of the Desert such as will now be mine. I tell 
thee it will bring tribute incalculable from commerce, 
and immunity from kings. Ay, by the sword of Solo- 
mon! doth my messenger seek favor for me with Caesar, 
that will he get. ' ' 

We ask in return for our devotion to your interests, 
for our steady influence in favor of a liberal policy, a 
more liberal treatment of the South. We do not ask 
to advance beyond you, but hand in hand with you. 
Ungrudgingly we have voted to deepen your harbors 
and widen your rivers until now the world's commerce 
can ride in safety in your harbors and at your wharves. 
The South now needs your help. Your commercial 
supremacy is as closely bound up in deepening our 
rivers and harbors as is that of the South. You are 
leading the vanguard for the capture of the trade of the 
world. To succeed against the nations you must have 
your raw material for manufacture at the lowest cost. 
The granary of Africa was not more necessary to Rome 
than the cotton, the coal, the coke, the iron, the lumber, 
and the oil of the South are to you. This must come to 
you by the lowest rate of transportation. The differ- 
ence of cost of one-half cent, per pound on j^our cotton 



Attitude of tKe Progressive SovitK 139 

and twenty-five cents per ton on your fuel means your 
being undersold in the foreign market by Great Britain 
and Germany. A small increase in the price of fuel 
lays your goods down in China and Japan at a com- 
petitive loss. The deepening of our Southern harbors 
and rivers that our products may reach your furnaces 
and mills at a minimum price means your underselling 
the world. With our harbors deepened and our rivers 
unlocked, you have, at a minimum, that which will 
place you beyond competition. It means more than 
cheap raw material to you. In a night the South has 
grown into a great manufacturing region. Only last 
month, accompanied by General Meany, a distinguished 
citizen of your city, intimately familiar with the South, 
who, notwithstanding the cares of a great business, 
is an able and comprehensive student of these great 
changing commercial conditions, I stood in a Southern 
city and watched the building of a great factory where 
five millions of dollars were being rapidly turned into 
two hundred thousand cotton spindles. Before this year 
shall have run its course, five millions of cotton spindles 
will be singing their merry music in the South. A 
Southern state to-day sets the price of pig-iron through- 
out the world. South Carolina is second to Massachu- 
setts in the manufacture of cotton. Our whole attention 
is now devoted to manufacturing our natural products. 
We are just learning where lies their real value. We 
were poor, our cities were quiet, our pockets were 
empty, otu- fields were worn out, until we learned firom 



I40 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

you the marvellous lessons of manufacturing. It is 
making us rich and powerful, and year by year we will 
reserve an increased proportion of our natural product 
for our own manufacture. These conditions will be 
more intense in the future than in the past. For only 
in the last few years has the product of the manufactory 
exceeded the capacity of this country to consume. It 
must be the policy of the North to give our various 
manufactured products the greatest opportunity, 
through our own deep harbors, to reach the people 
of the world, rather than to cast this great trade inland 
to become a competitor of your mills. We do not wish 
this condition to arise. Instead of being your competi- 
tor in business, we wish, through our own ports, to 
go out into the world as your brother and helper. 
You will observe, gentlemen, that in nearness to raw 
material, cheapness of labor, and in general trade con- 
ditions, manufacturing is done far more cheaply in the 
South than elsewhere. To-day, that which is your 
commercial interest is as surely ours. 

Sir, more than this do we ask. We ask a broader 
Americanism on your part and a better understanding 
and appreciation of the great section which I so un- 
worthily represent. In all tenderness and love we ask 
that you will not take the statement of the scheming 
demagogue with his flame of fire, nor that of the parti- 
san newspaper whose highest ambition is to obey the 
dictates of Party. The South comes to-day with clean 
hands and asks your own judgment, your own investi- 



Attitvide of tHe Progressive SoxitK 141 

gation. We trust you implicitly. The honest, sub- 
stantial sentiment of the North is what we crave. 
With the great growth of the South we are part and 
parcel of your life, industrial and social. No two 
sections of the Union have their lives so intertwined. 
Without the essentials of the South your great trade 
would wither. From the great Empire of the South 
you can draw every primary element of industrial life 
— your cotton, your lumber, your cheapest and best 
coal and coke and iron. In the future, far more than 
in the past, will you be dependent upon our great 
natural products to keep your forges blazing and your 
manufactories at their ceaseless work. From our mines 
you draw your largest dividends and from our forests 
daily comes to you a king's ransom. The railroads 
you have built in the South are the finest revenue pro- 
ducers in the world ; and from your cotton mills, which 
you have reared in the South, your dividends are thrice 
greater than from your mills in the North. From the 
boundless wealth of our Southern land we can give 
you, in rich profusion, all of the elements needed by 
you in your foreign trade. Our importance in your 
world of industry is too permanent, too important for 
your estimate of us to be taken second-hand. Then, 
when our lives are so intertwined, he who interferes 
with our relations and thorough understanding is 
treading on ground consecrated to the welfare of this 
great Republic. 
We wish you to become more thoroughly acquainted 



142 Some SoxatKern Qviestions 

with our great section. No country can become really 
great unless it is acquainted with the resources of each 
part. We wish you to know of our mountains of iron 
and coal. We want you to see the wealth of our 
unbroken forests, suflBcient to supply the world. We 
wish to show you the teeming wealth of our soil and 
our multitudinous natural advantages. And above all, 
we wish you to understand and appreciate the kindli- 
ness and liberality of the Southern people and of our 
ability and desire to carefully protect the property of 
those who have invested their capital with us. We are 
not without sin. The great conflict left us with for- 
tunes destroyed and hampered by another race equal 
to us under the law, but unequal to us in its traditions 
and civilization. With no precedents in civilization to 
guide us, we have made mistakes ; but we ask that 
you will try to understand our position and let nothing 
interfere with that better knowledge of a people so 
close and necessary to your greatness. 

Under conditions which rarely ever before confronted 
a people, we have taken up the rebuilding of the State, 
the rehabilitating and glorifying of the South. We 
twine our arms around her because we have been 
through sorrows with her, and you know the tender 
sympathy between those who have together mingled 
their tears. But, sir, there have been no idle tears ; 
there has been no dreaming in these years since the 
war. We have not waited for the coming of the white 
sails of the ships from over the summer seas. As 



i\ttit\acle of tHe Progressive SovitK 143 

Dr. J. William Jones, the old Chaplain of the Army of 
Northern Virginia, my boyhood friend, was passing 
along the road after the war, he saw a young man 
ploughing in the field, guiding the plough with one 
hand, while an empty sleeve hung at his side. When 
nearer, he recognized the ploughman as a young man 
whom he had known in the army, who had been reared 
in the greatest affluence, and had been accustomed to 
every luxury. Being deeply touched when he saw his 
young friend, maimed in body and destroyed in fortune, 
at work, with the walls of the broken house and the 
fenceless field, sad reminders of what had been a happy 
home, he called to him and expressed the tenderest 
sympathy for his saddened condition in life. Straight- 
ening himself up, with a happy smile, the young man 
answered: "Oh, Brother Jones, that is all right. I 
thank God that I have one arm left and an opportunity 
to use it for those I love. ' * With this inspiration twin- 
ing itself around our lives, permeating and strengthen- 
ing us for our struggle, the field has put on its green, 
the old house has been recovered, the fences have been 
rebuilt, and the South, your co-worker in an industrial 
empire, is walking proudly by your side. Hallowed 
by such associations, the click of the reaper as it cuts 
the yellow grain, the whir of the cotton spindles and 
the rattle of the manufactory as they float over the 
Southern fields, are to me the sweetest music ever 
heard by mortal ears. 
We are brothers in this Republic of Trade. We are 



144 Some So\itKern Qxiestions 

co-heirs in the greatest civilization which the world has 
ever seen. We are the same in blood, in race, and in 
traditions. Together we have blazed out the broadest 
path in the world's civilization. Together we have 
builded a government more glorious than any ever 
touched by human hands or inspired by human thought. 
Together we have stood in the ranks in the defence of 
its eternal principles. Then, sir, as a people united 
not alone by the bonds of mere governmental measures, 
but by the better and dearer ties of a people necessary 
to each other, appreciating, understanding, and minis- 
tering to each other. 

" In the room 
Of this grief-shadowed present, there shall be 
A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw 
The heart, and never shall a tender tie 
Be broken ! in whose reign the eternal Change 
That waits on growth and action shall proceed 
With everlasting Concord hand in hand." 

But yesterday the sweet voice of Henry Grady was 
hushed, and every patriot mourned the loss of him who 
was binding together the broken bonds and healing 
the wounds yet not closed. In the city of Buffalo last 
month the one upon whom his mantle has fallen and 
whose lips are attuned to the sweetness of that great 
follower of Him who said, " Love your enemies and 
bless them that curse you, ' ' teaching the sweetness of 
love, of faith, and of hope, in touching and tender 



-Attitvide of tKe Progressive SoxitK 145 

words pictured the faith of the toiler in the fields as 
the sweet bells of the Angelus came through the glory 
of the autumn sunset summoning his soul to prayer 
ere the evening of the day. Many of us have been 
touched and helped by the holy significance of the 
spirit of the simple faith breathed by the Angelus and 
so beautifully interpreted by the great orator. When 
reading his sweet words where he so aptly taught the 
faith and hope of the lowly workman, there arose to 
my mind a picture teaching to me a far holier and 
sweeter lesson than that of the bowed toiler of the 
Angelus. It hangs in a little cottage home in the 
Blue Ridge of Virginia under the firagrant shade of 
the whispering pines, where the mountain and the 
valley gently touch and kiss each other into kindness. 
The simple picture has none of the surroundings of the 
Angelus, no mellowed, artful light, no golden frame, 
no thrill of reverent obeisance for the dead painter who 
so wonderfully interpreted for mankind the sweet spirit 
of Faith and Hope. Its frame is formed of the brown 
birchen bark, and decorated with the cone of the moun- 
tain pine. It was not created by the cunning hand of 
a great painter, but it is a simple wood-cut, represent- 
ing a broken mountain plain in the gray morning of an 
April day. In the misty foreground there stands an 
army of men, with want and sorrow pinching and dis- 
tressing them, with their ragged gray uniforms hang- 
ing in tatters from their gaunt forms, with bowed heads 
and swimming eyes, with ruin and disaster surrounding 



146 Some SovitHern Qiaestions 

them like grim phantoms. Over beyond them is a 
gray-e5'ed man with his slouch hat in his hand. It is 
Grant at Appomattox, and he is saying to Lee's broken 
army, there will be no Roman triumphs, no passing 
under the yoke, no humiliation, no imprisoning. ' ' Men, 
go home and take your horses with you. You will 
need them to put in your crops." Great commander ! 
splendid leader ! friend of the South ! whose memory 
will ever sit enshrined in the hearts of the sons of Lee's 
ragged soldiers at Appomattox. Before the picture of 
this exceeding charity the notes of the Angelus grow 
soft, 

" Your voices break and falter in the darkness. 
Break, falter, and are still," 

and touch but gently the souls of those, who, bowing 
their heads, wait for the inspiration which comes from 
their mellow cadence. The Angelus teaches Faith and 
Hope, but the little woodcut, resting under the benison 
of the Blue Virginia mountains, voices a Charity be- 
yond compare. "And now abideth faith, hope, and 
charity, these three, but the greatest of these is char- 
ity." Gathering the spirit of the great commander 
and holding the glory of his exceeding charity before 
us as an inspiration and guide, let us consecrate our- 
selves to the immolation of the wounds and sorrows 
and uncharities of the sad old past on the glowing and 
rekindled altars of a re-united Nation. For, oh, my 
brothers, there is something that we of the South de- 



Attitude of tKe Progressive So\itK 147 

sire that is more boundless than your commerce, richer 
by far than your gold and silver and your gems, more 
yearned for by us than your broad harbors filled with 
the ladened ships of the nations, and more priceless to 
us than the fruit of your looms and your shops and 
your manufactories. Something before which gross 
utilitarianism and materialism are but ashes and dust. 
We want your love. Ours in all of its plenitude and 
richness we freely give to you, and withhold of it not 
a jot or a tittle. The winds to-night, whispering over 
the mountains of my far-away Southern home, softly 
sing of our boundless charity and love. The sweet 
Southern sun has long ago kissed away the crimson 
stains firom our fields, and our hearts are as redolent of 
charity and love as the magnolia and the lily are of 
their sweetness and perfume. The nodding cotton ball 
and the meadows richly green are fast covering the 
rent and hurt of war. The great heart of the South is 
full and yearns for its once estranged brother with a 
love that passeth all understanding. Our old battle 
flags are laid away in that hallowed ark of the house- 
hold where lie the faded glove, the old lace collar, the 
worn garments, the little keepsakes, the lock of hair 
of our mothers, and the little worn child's shoe with 
sweet enchantment bringing to memory's silent halls 
the lullaby of little feet, and on those sacred days when 
with reverent hands we tenderly touch them and gently 
smooth away the wrinkles of time, the faint odor of 
rosemary and lavender breathes only of love and ten- 



148 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

demess. With outstretched hands, we of the South 
ask your love, your charity, and tenderness, and within 
the touch of the most memorial year when we on the 
battle-fields of the nation have commingled the conse- 
crated blood of the North and the South, upon whom- 
soever for partisan purposes, or private or political gain, 
would rekindle the fires of sectional hate, we would 
invoke the thunders of Him who holds the nations in 
the hollow of His hand. Then, jny brothers, with 
your strong arms about the South, strengthened, en- 
couraged, united, and glorified, the world would hear 
the majestic and solemn tread of a free and constitution- 
loving people carrying its civilization and commerce 
and its religion to the nations of the uttermost parts of 
the earth. Without irreverence, with this great glory 
trembling upon us, in the words of the old Prophet of 
the Most High, " Behold thou shalt call a nation that 
thou knowest not, and a nation that knew not thee 
shall run unto thee, because of the I^ord thy God, and 
for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee." 



IV 
THE ElvECTlVE FRANCHISE 

DE TOCQUEVILI^E, the aristocratic delineator of 
American Democracy, narrates that in his trav- 
els into the primeval America he arrived upon the 
shores of a crystal lake, embosomed in untouched forests; 
that in the midst of the lake was a beautiful islet, shaded 
to the banks with trees old as the daylight of time. He 
crossed over to the island and was delighted with the 
richness of the soil and the exuberance of growth of 
tree and flower, and was awed by the silence and beauty 
and solitude of the scene. However, amidst the majesty 
of this morning of nature, he found upon the island 
some remains of man. Upon careful inspection he dis- 
covered, amidst the glory of nature, where a European 
had made his home. But how changed ! The logs of 
the cabin had fallen to the ground and had sprouted 
anew, and over their remains had grown the flower and 
the tree. The scattered stones of the hearth lay under 
the fallen chimney and were blackened with the old 
fire, and were over-scattered with the thin ashes of 
another day. He stood in silent admiration of the 
glories of nature and the littleness of man, and as he 
left the solitude he exclaimed with melancholy, "Are 

the ruins, then, already here? " 

149 



150 Some SovitHern Qxiestions 

So, Mr. President, when I received from your able 
and courteous secretary the formulation of the question 
for discussion, which betokens within itself that, whilst 
we are in the very glory of the dawn of our day, the 
sacred temple of our hopes and love was broken, I was 
led to exclaim with the old philosopher, "Are the 
ruins, then, already here ? " 

In my poor way, I will this evening examine the 
sacred edifice, and we will together touch its walls and 
attempt to ascertain whether foundation and lintel and 
jam and turret stand true and plumb as when they left 
the hands of the master builders ; for, as Mr. Lowell 
relates, when Guizot once asked ' ' How long I thought 
the Republic would last ? " "I replied, ' ' said he, ' ' so 
long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue 
dominant. ' ' Do we not all assent to his reply ? 

The formulation of the subject for investigation, 
" Does the experience of this Republic up to the close 
of the nineteenth century justify universal manhood 
suffrage, or should the elective franchise be limited by 
education, property, or other qualification," carries 
in it the most important and vital questions of our 
civil life. 

The question is of to-day, and I will not take precious 
time to present the rubbish of the history of the fran- 
chise. A word, however, is necessary that we may in- 
telligently grasp the conditions of the early days of the 
Republic and understand their influence upon the pres- 
ent. Being a Virginian, I will be excused by the in- 



XKe EIrlective FrancHise 151 

dulgent audience for having taken Virginia as a general 
type showing the evolution of the present franchise 
condition. 

The status in Virginia explains why the Fathers, 
when they annunciated the great salient principles of 
free government, a radical departure in the lines of 
government, did not also announce manhood suffrage, 
the present essence of democracy. 

Necessarily, when the great truths of representative 
government were proclaimed by the Fathers, they could 
not at once disembarrass themselves from all of the 
accompaniments of government as theretofore experi- 
enced by them. It is generally understood that the 
limitation of suffrage to freeholders, which practically 
made an aristocratic government, and the equal repre- 
sentation of the counties, which was sectional, were 
voluntarily adopted by the people of Virginia, Such 
was not the case. This limitation of suffrage to free- 
holders was the result of the commands of the King of 
England, and these commands were enforced by the 
bayonets of two regiments of his soldiers, and it was 
without any act of assembly. Thus, at the time of the 
Revolution, for more than a century freehold govern- 
ment had been the practical law of the people. Yet it 
was contrary to the salient principles of the peoples' 
free government. The question then naturally arises, 
why was this system continued after the people 
had substituted their own in place of the rule of 
the King of England ? This is frequently asked by 



152 Some SovitHern Qviestions 

those who look toward the reimposition of suffrage 
limitation. 

In Virginia when the convention of 1776 met and 
adopted its Declaration of Rights : 

That all men are by nature, equal, free, and inde- 
pendent ; 

That all power is vested in, and consequently de- 
rived from, the people ; 

That government is and ought to be instituted for 
the common benefit, protection, and security of the 
people ; and 

That a majority of the people hath an indubitable, 
inalienable, and indefeasible right to act for the public 
weal ; 

there was then in the condition of affairs a practical 
necessity for the continuation of the anomaly of free- 
hold suffrage. The convention, composed of some of 
the greatest and wisest of the Fathers of the Republic, 
was sitting within sight of the bayonets of the King of 
Great Britain, and within sound of his cannon. They 
had inaugtuated the war in which every right of life 
and property was imperilled. The freeholders were a 
great and powerful body upon whom was the chief re- 
liance for defence against the tyranny of England, and 
hence they adopted the proposition that the right of 
suffrage ' ' shall remain as at present exercised." There 
was no time to change and pull down and build up. 
It was the time to fight. The Fathers thoroughly un- 
derstood the controvention of the principles announced 



THe Elective FrancKise 153 

by them and as set out by their theory of government. 
Mr. JeflFerson earnestly insisted that the people, " So 
soon as leisure should be afforded them for entrenching 
within good form the rights for which they had bled," 
should do so. This demand for equal exercise of 
suffrage never afterwards was at rest. Alike in the 
North as in Virginia the demand was unceasing on the 
part of the plain people that they should have a part 
in the management as they had in the perils of the 
government. This culminated in Virginia in the 
memorial of 1829 presented to the convention by John 
Marshall, in which the following pregnant words 
occur : 

' ' If we are sincerely republican, we must give our 
confidence to the principles we profess. We have been 
taught by our fathers that all power is vested in, and 
derived from, the people ; not the freeholders ; that the 
majority of the community, in whom abides the phys- 
ical force, have also the political right of creating and 
remoulding at will, their civil institutions. Nor can 
this right be anywhere more safely deposited. The 
generality of mankind, doubtless, desire to become 
owners of property ; left free to reap the fruits of their 
labors, they will seek to acquire it honestly. It can 
never be their interest to overburden, or render pre- 
carious, what they themselves desire to enjoy in peace. 
But should they ever prove as base as the argument 
supposes, force alone, arms, not votes, could effect 
their designs ; and when that shall be attempted, what 



154 Some SoiatKern Qxiestions 

virtue is there in Constitutional restrictions, in mere 
wax and paper, to withstand it ? To deny to the great 
body of the people all share in the government, on 
suspicion that they may deprive others of their prop- 
erty; to rob them in advance of their rights ; to look to 
a privileged order as the fountain and depositary of all 
power is to depart from the fundamental maxims, to 
destroy the chief beauty, the characteristic feature, 
indeed, of Republican Government." 

In 1849, these words became true in Virginia as well 
in practice as in theory. 

And generally throughout the Republic at this 
period there rested the strife between the mighty spirits 
of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the one 
living in latter days in the stately steppings of Daniel 
Webster, and the other, passing strange for a Virginian 
to say, reincarnated in the tall form and furrowed brow 
and catholic spirit of Abraham lyincoln. 

What has been the effect of universal suffrage upon 
the great living principles of our government ? Whither 
has been the trend, upward or downward? Has it 
strengthened or pauperized the fundamental principles 
which we have been taught were the abiding glory of 
free government ? How has it affected the relation of 
the citizen to the local government, to the town, to the 
city, to the State, and to the Union ; the relation between 
the State and the National Government ; and the rela- 
tion between the classes composing this free govern- 
ment? These questions, while allowing no touch of 



XKe Elective FrancKise 155 

poetry or opportunity for the play of fancy, are vital, 
and their general principles alone can be here 
considered. 

How has universal suffrage affected the principle of 
local self-government, for as one of the great living 
heads of my profession, Judge Dillon, well says, " and 
local self-government, it cannot be too often enforced, 
is the true and only solid basis of our free institutions ' ' ? 

This is the first relation of the citizen to government, 
and it is the fundamental idea of our governmental life 
because it affects the immediate daily life of the citizen. 
This primary exercise of the rights of citizenship is so 
important that I will be pardoned for a little elementary 
discussion, for a free people should never become tired 
of contemplating the first steps of free institutions. 

The borough-mote in Old England preserved and 
cultured the vital spark of Teutonic liberty. The bor- 
ough bell was the living resonant signal as far as its 
piercing clang could reach, warning fierce baron and 
greedy churchman and grasping king that the English- 
man held to his local rights, even if these rights 
required his blood. 

This is the principle which has distinguished Old 
England from the other nations of the world, her reso- 
lute clinging to the primal principles of her government. 
In the borough alone was the right of free speech in 
open meeting. Here alone in all of the Kingdom was 
the right of self-government, and above all, here was 
the right of trial by one's peers. " Had Kebel been a 



156 Some SoiatKern Questions 

dweller within the borough," said the Burgesses, " he 
would have gotten his acquittal as our liberty is." 
Under Angevin and Saxon the local power of self-gov- 
ernment was resolutely defended. Sometimes it was 
paid for in money, more often in blood ; but at what- 
ever price, it was gotten, despite conflict, bloody though 
it may have been, or price however high. Then as 
now the borough was the schoolhouse of liberty. Here 
were discussed, and often-times fiercely discussed, the 
first beginnings and principles of free government; for 
the settlement of these principles affected the immediate 
welfare of the community, and frequently the personal 
liberty of its inhabitants. ' ' Let the City of London 
have all its old liberties and its free customs as well by 
land as water, besides this I will and grant, that all 
other cities, boroughs, and towns and ports have all of 
their liberties and free customs, ' ' rang the clarion note 
of the Great Charter. *' They have given me four and 
twenty over kings," exclaimed John Lackland, as he 
gnashed his teeth in his anguish, but as usual he was 
mistaken in the people, for instead of twenty-four over 
kings, he had placed for all time the written guarantees 
of local government, the very germ of liberty, in the 
hands of all of his people. 

More than five hundred years afterwards, in a new 
country, the American Revolution broke out, says 
De Tocqueville, and the doctrine of the sovereignty 
of the people grew out of the township and took 
possession of the State. 



XKe Elective FrancKise 157 

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most 
valuable laws, suspending our own Legislatures, ran the 
indignant protest of the Declaration of Independence. 

Here, then, for the first time, voluntarily, in the 
history of government, was there incorporated in the 
initiative life of a State, the full, free, and unqualified 
consent of the law-making power to the principle of 
local self-government. We have changed the borough 
and the town to the magisterial and school district, the 
town, the village, and the city, but have only trans- 
ferred to our citizens the doctrine as well as the tradi- 
tions of the grandest figure in the history of firee 
government, the English borough-man. Sir, it seems 
to me that if I could make the stricken marble glow 
with living life, it would not speak in the image of 
stem Puritan or belted Virginian Cavalier, as typical 
of our political being, great though their lessons have 
been ; but rather would I create as the chiefest figure 
of our civil life the English borough-man, holding in 
his strong and resolute hands, against all comers, the 
right of firee speech, of firee local government, and the 
right of trial by jury. 

How, then, under the exercise of universal suffrage 
do we stand to-day in the evolution of local political 
government ? The insistent demand of the citizen, 
following the English tradition, is for the firee control 
of local matters, concerning the local interests of town- 
ship, district, or county, as the years roll on, the demand 
is becoming more potent within their respective limita- 



158 Some SoutHern Qxiestions 

tions that the local government must be uninterfered 
with and uncontrolled. Local self-government was 
never so potent in the history of civil government as it 
is to-day. In education, police, and fiscal affairs its 
principles have manifestly broadened and strengthened 
since the advent of universal suffrage. In every State, 
we see the citizen strengthening his local government 
by careful legislative enactment controlling the manage- 
ment of his local business. Universal suffrage has 
peculiarly intensified the desire for, and benefit of, 
local self-government, for the obvious reason that the 
local government deals not with the few great ques- 
tions, but rather with the every-day small affairs of 
life in which the every-day small people, unlearned 
and learned, whether owning property or not, are di- 
rectly interested. This growth of the desire for local 
self-government is well illustrated by the increasing 
legislation in all of the States, providing for the elec- 
tion of district and township officers rather than their 
appointment by a central body such as the County 
Court. This principle has vindicated the great and 
persistent contention of our English ancestry by its 
history in our Union, for local self-government, under 
universal suffrage, has increased its efficiency in pro- 
moting public good by decreasing taxation, increas- 
ing the educational facilities, and taking direct charge 
of and improving the police and fiscal affairs. Here do 
we behold the action of the people directly upon public 
affairs, untrammelled by political thought and uninter- 



THe Elective KrancKise 159 

fered with by tlie demand of party loyalty. Then, Sir, 
we believe that in this important feature we see one of 
the peculiar triumphs of our present franchise system, 
for in every State, on the prairie and in the mountain, 
in agricultural as well as in commercial and manufac- 
turing communities, we behold the extending, by 
careful enactment under universal suffrage, of the local 
self-governing institutions, which called from Thomas 
Jefferson the expression, "Those wards, called town- 
ships in England, are the vital principles of their 
governments, and have proved themselves the wisest 
invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect 
exercise of self-government and for the preservation of 
liberty." 

lyct us briefly consider the citizen in his relation to 
a larger and wider sweep of local self-government than 
that of the borough, county, or town. The American 
city has given to universal suffrage its severest trial. 
Here has certainly been presented the hardest condi- 
tions attending any exercise of universal suffrage. I^et 
us for a moment discuss the conditions presented to 
the franchise by the American city. They are unique in 
the whole history of civil government. In the first 
place, those who exercise the franchise in most great 
cities are largely foreign, either by birth or immediate 
lineage. They have had no experience whatever in the 
art of government, and in most instances they belonged 
to the governed class. The American city is growing 
wondrously in wealth, size, and power, and its streets, 



i6o Some SovitHern Qviestions 

parks, schools, hospitals, and all public institutions and 
their administration are not the results of centuries of 
civic evolution, as is the case in Europe. They are 
urgently demanded, at once, and on a colossal scale, 
and must be administered with no guiding precedent. 
They are created practically out of the ground. They 
can not, as in Europe, be added to here, or patched 
there, and the fault of this century corrected in the 
next. Their evolution from town to city can not run 
along with the evolution of the people from barbarism 
to civilization, and thus have relations which gradually 
adjust themselves to abiding and final conditions. 
They must spring into life full panoplied for the needs 
of a vastly growing and exacting population. 

" It is not strange that the people educating and ex- 
perimenting on city government, for which there is 
absolutely no precedent, under conditions of exceptional 
difficulty, should have to stumble toward correct and 
successful methods through experience, which may 
be both costly and distressing, ' ' says a great authority. 
Thus the city has a burden of educating the governing 
population whose idea of government is entirely low, 
and, concurrently, the city must take care of its material 
growth and carry on all of the practical details of gov- 
ernment. This growth in its haste has produced extra 
cost in the creation and exercise of municipal institu- 
tions, and has naturally afforded unexampled oppor- 
tunity for municipal crime. Notwithstanding these 
conditions, the spirit of our free institutions has created 



TKe Elective FrancHise i6i 

in the American city a marvel of eflScient local govern- 
ment, and has raised it, in practically one lifetime, to 
the height of commercial glory and to unapproachable 
civil magnificence. " I^ooked at in this light," says 
the same authority, *' the moral would seem to be, not 
so much that the American cities are justly criticizable, 
but that results so great have been achieved in so short 
a time." 

Considering this unique condition of municipal popu- 
lation and growth, the cities of this country, as a rule, 
under the influence of universal suffrage, are well 
governed. It is true, in many instances, we have the 
Boss, and the Ring Rule, and, as compared with the 
result, small deficiencies in effective government. But 
should we not consider the ultimate result of our system 
of general suffrage in the city ? Broadway may not be 
always well swept, but our franchise system embracing 
all the people has made it the greatest street in the 
world. This great city, oftentimes, may have ineffec- 
tive management of its politics and finances, but its 
great harbor is crowded with the ships of all the 
nations, and the world bows to its unapproachable 
civil grandeur. Again, it has been frequently made 
the illustration of bad civil government under the rule 
of the people endowed with the universal firanchise, 
but has not this universal franchise created the greatest 
city on this continent ? We hear of much vice in the 
city, but I challenge a comparison of New York City 
with London or Paris. Do we sufficiently consider 



i62 Some SoxitKern Questions 

ultimate results when we are discussing the political 
management of civil government, both city and state ? 
Beyond question, there has been municipal crime, but 
whenever it has been ascertained public sentiment has 
demanded, and in most instances eflfected, the punish- 
ment of the criminal. When we speak of municipal 
crime, does it compare, in anywise, with the scandals 
and the crime arising from the opening and improving 
of the new Paris? Is it to be mentioned wdth the 
municipal crimes of I^ondon twenty years ago after its 
thousand years of existence ? Are not the results of 
popular control to be commended somewhat when you 
have the best system of public schools, of charity and 
correction, of fire protection, of parks and streets in the 
known world ? 

It is true that the ideal of government of a portion 
of the population of the city is low, but would it not be 
fraught with infinite evil to keep it at that level by 
withholding the franchise from a large part of the 
population ? Without argument, what effect upon the 
city would the vast foreign bom element of this city have 
if debarred from the great social and educational benefit 
derived from the exercise of the franchise ? Which is 
worse in a free government, a badly swept street, or 
thousands of discontented people walking the clean 
one? Surely, in a popular government, what cause 
of discontent could be so potent as the debarring from 
the franchise ? As a general rule, there have been crime 
and mismanagement in the American cities, yet imder 



XKe Elective FrancHise 163 

the exercise of the universal franchise the American 
city has steadily grown and is growing better. The 
elections are fairer, the schools infinitely better, the 
streets are cleaner, the finances more honestly admin- 
istered than they were ten years ago, and I appeal to 
your own experience to know if every general condi- 
tion of municipal government is not improving under 
the practical application of the present system of 
suffrage. The cities of smaller size are practically well 
governed, and in almost every State in the Union the 
laws governing the cities and the application of them 
are vastly improved. Every year witnesses the increase 
in the number of States, which provide in their con- 
stitutions against special charters being made for cities, 
and a number of States are conferring upon the cities 
the right to approve their charters before they go into 
operation. 

Says President Seth Low, at whose feet as at those 
of a master do I sit when studying this interesting 
question of municipal government, ' ' Every one under- 
stands that universal suffrage has its drawbacks, and 
in cities these defects become especially evident. It 
would be uncandid to deny that many of the problems 
of American cities spring from this factor. Especially 
because the voting population is continually swollen by 
foreign emigrants whom time alone can educate into 
an intelligent harmony with the American system. 
But because there is a scum upon the surface of a boil- 
ing liquid it does not follow that the material nor the 



164 Some So-utKern Questions 

process to which it is subjected is itself bad. Universal 
suffrage as it exists in the United States is not only a 
great element of safety in the present day and genera- 
tion, but is perhaps the mightiest educational force to 
which the masses of men have been exposed. . . . 
It is probable that no other system of government 
would have been able to cope any more successfully 
on the whole with the actual condition that American 
cities have been compelled to face. ' ' 

Pursuing this " Hierarchy of Liberty , " let us briefly 
consider the next higher relation of the citizen to gov- 
ernment. Has a half century of universal suffrage 
preserved the institutional rights of the State ? This 
is most important in determining whether a modifica- 
tion should be made in the existing system, for during 
this period the spirit of Democracy speaking through 
universal suffrage has exercised unlimited control of 
the institutions of our government, and could at will 
change or destroy. Those who formed this govern- 
ment knew not well the power they were creating. 
They had only before them the ancient Democracies, 
which universally, from the impulses of passion or of 
interest, destroyed existing conditions and disregarded 
organic rights. The Fathers wished to adopt a plan of 
government which, while it would be democratic, yet 
no power of the majority could interfere and destroy 
certain rights and organic principles. Hence they 
created the judiciary, a selected few, and practically 
said that this department of democratic government, 



TKe Elective rrancKise 165 

within constituted limitations, should be the casting 
and controlling voice as to the rights most sacred to 
the people. It was certainly a bold idea in the new 
system of democratic government to allow a few to 
settle the great questions affecting the many. Yet to- 
day, although the decisions of the courts have been 
oftentimes contrary to the judgment of the people and 
sometimes even oppressive, yet the spirit of democracy 
dominated by the universal suffrage of the people has 
left unimpaired in power and in dignity the courts of 
the land. Nay more, appreciating that national and 
state life can only live through the stable and impartial 
spirit of justice, it has enlarged and widened the powers 
of the courts until to-day, in the estimation of the peo- 
ple, and in fact, they embody the highest and most 
sublime attributes of this free nation. 

The Fathers having in mind the immense powers of 
the executive head of the British Government gave the 
veto power sparingly and grudgingly to the executives 
of the States, yet the people under the influences of 
universal suffrage have doubly guaranteed the States 
against their own acts, and during the life-time of the 
present system of franchise have practically given the 
salutary power of veto, excepting possibly in two or 
three instances, to the governor of every State in the 
Union. 

The fear has been on the part of those interested in 
our institutions that the majority, uncontrolled, would 
weaken and practically destroy the binding and organic 



i66 Some So\itKern Questions 

powers of the State constitutions, and introduce a doc- 
trine of loose interpretation of their important pro- 
visions. What has been the result ? Constitutional 
provisions created in the early days of the States, so far 
as the people are concerned, have been strengthened in 
detail and particular until every organic right of to- 
day is protected as never before in the history of civil 
government. 

Instead of license and instability of organic govern- 
ment, universal suiSfrage has increased conservatism, 
and in one hundred years only the post-bellum amend- 
ments have been added to the Constitution, and unless 
it is absolutely and potently demanded an amendment 
to the State constitution universally meets defeat at 
the hands of the people. 

Although the legislatures are the nearest repre- 
sentative agents of the people, still by constitutional 
enactment the legislatures of the States are hedged 
about by stringent provisions, holding them to 
strict accountability in every sense of their legislative 
life. 

The great principles of Magna Charta, those primor- 
dial rights as to life, liberty, and property, under our 
suffrage system, have been strengthened by the people; 
and year by year, in essence and by legislative enact- 
ment, they have become the increasing breath of the 
State. Universal suffrage has accentuated the sacred 
rights of free speech, the freedom of religion, the suprem- 
acy of the civil over the military authority, the rights 



THe Elective FrancKise 167 

of the press, and tlie sacredness of vested property in 
its various forms, calling forth from Sir Henry Maine, 
certainly no friend of popular government, the enco- 
mium, that "all this beneficent prosperity reposes on 
the sacredness of contract and the stability of private 
property ; the first the implement, and the last the re- 
ward of success in the universal competition," and in 
a democrary generally emphasizing, "that this is a 
government of law, not of men." 

Whilst the organic powers of the State have been 
strengthened by the people, yet State socialism under 
universal suffrage has not grown with the growth of 
the people. To live by taxation imposed by the State 
upon some other person and to exist by the exertion 
of others is the temptation of the body politic of a free 
government. A half century ago when the spirit of 
universal suffrage became the policy of our country, 
a great Englishman remarked, " In thirty years the 
American States will be cooking for the populace." 
Notwithstanding the unexampled and marvellous in- 
crease in the complexities of government and in the 
essentials of our civilization, to-day, whilst the people 
hold absolutely in their strong hands the purse strings 
of taxation and the whole power of the State, and 
whilst the conditions of life have become necessarily 
more severe with them, yet they have not increased 
the sphere of the State in lifting from their oftentimes 
tired shoulders one burden of life. Tempted by the 
fair promises of party, preyed on by the demagogue, 



i68 Some SovitKern Qxiestions 

in sight of the bursting treasuries of the State, yet the 
sphere of the State, as expressed by the organic in- 
stitutions of to-day, comprises the care of the poor and 
insane, the establishment of hospitals, the education 
of the people, the management of the State machinery, 
in both the spirit, and in almost the exact words, as 
penned by the hands of the Constitution makers of a 
century ago. "Whenever an enlightened socialism has 
enlarged this sphere of the State it has always been 
a necessary concomitant of, and logical sequence to, 
these original organic powers of the State and never 
for the individual material benefit of the citizen. The 
Patriarcha is still a dream as it was in the days of 
Sir Robert Filmer, and universal suffrage has not 
purchased the ease of the people at the price of the 
paternalism of the State. It has grasped the principles 
of universal education as the broadest and best founda- 
tion for republican institutions ; and whilst the State 
succeeded the Church as the controlling influence in 
directing education, still under pressure, oftentimes 
great, the people have resolutely clung to the princi- 
ples of absolute divorce from sectarian religious teach- 
ing on the part of the State. Excepting under peculiar 
conditions in one portion of our country, the principle 
of universal suffrage has been widened by the State 
until it enfolds all of the people. The seeming anomaly 
of its arrested development in one section is particularly 
germane to this branch of discussion, as to the relation 
of the people to the State, and with your permission I 



THe Elective FrancKise 169 

will briefly consider the peculiar conditions of suflfrage 
in the South. 

Will you not to-night, for a short time, listen to a 
Southern man, as he endeavors to lay upon your broad 
shoulders a little of the burden which has weighed so 
heavily upon the shoulders of your sisters of the South, 
and to explain why the march of the universal franchise 
has been delayed in the South? No good Southern 
man fears to trust implicitly the chivalry of the North. 
Necessarily, I can occupy but a short time upon this 
interesting question, and will but generally consider it. 

When the war ended, from Virginia to Georgia the yel- 
low Southern sun looked down upon ruin unparalleled 
in the history of civilization. The cities were destroyed, 
and the lands were devastated. We were without 
clothes, or money, or food. Our fathers and brothers 
were sleeping in 

" The voiceless graves where dead men dream." 

Our industries were paralyzed, and our civilization 
was uprooted. There were alone left the bright sun, 
the fruitful soil, and a far-away hope. These would 
have been sufiSicient foundation upon which a resolute 
and energetic people could have again reared an abid- 
ing and glorious civilization. But, Sir, in the years 
gone by, on the shores of Old Virginia, there landed a 
ship 

•* Built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark," 
and when the man of the South lifted his despairing 



17° Some SovitKern Questions 

eyes they beheld his former slave, uneducated, untried 
in government, untouched with the genius of rule, un- 
permeated with Americanism, sitting on the broken 
porticos and bestriding the fallen pillars of his State. 
Since Alaric and Attila scourged Europe, never has 
wrong so wrought upon the civilization of the world as 
it did in the years of Negro rule in the South. I turn 
with sorrow from the dreadful record, and only look 
back upon the wretchedness of the Past in order to 
explain the complexity of the Present. 

The debts of the Southern States were increased four 
hundred millions of dollars. States were pauperized, 
and the millions squandered went into the hands of 
the Negroes and their allies, and not in the channels of 
good government. Debauchery' ran riot, and political 
dishonesty held a saturnalia equalled in its unspeak- 
able horrors only in the last days of Imperial Rome. 
Law was disregarded, the rights of Habeas Corpus and 
the great fundamental principles of Anglo-Saxon gov- 
ernment were laughed to scorn ; juries were packed 
and courts debauched ; men were not allowed to appear 
in court to show cause why they should not be bereft 
of their remaining property. The supreme courts were 
travesties, and were packed or elected to do the bid- 
ding of those who wished to legalize by the terms of 
the law some legislative crime. 

What was the natural result of this terrible condition 
of social and State life ? Men seeing the State forever 
ruined, their property confiscated, their very lives in 



XKe Elective FrancKise 171 

danger, business paralyzed, taxes increased an hundred- 
fold, and property destroyed, did many things, dictated 
by the sole spirit of self-preservation, which were not 
understood by the North at the time. 

I^t us speak plainly and yet with charity. We are 
brothers and each wants to understand the troubles of 
the other. Here has been the chief trouble in this 
great question. The Negro question has been made 
a political cry and the mere flotsam and jetsam of 
party. It is the most important question, political as 
well as economical, which has ever confronted civiliza- 
tion at any time or in any country. It demands all of 
our power, all of our love and patience and forbear- 
ance, and should be worked out by the whole people 
uninfluenced by the demagogue or the wish of party. 
We, of the South, ask that you simply put yourselves 
in the position of your Southern brethren. I mean, Sir, 
only in your kindly imagination, for with all of the 
strength of my life, I pray that you and the North may 
never walk the road of sufiering and sorrow as has the 
South. Consider the fundamental difierence in your 
political and social situation and that of the South. 

Your sole cause of complaint as to popular govern- 
ment is that you have a large number of foreigners 
in your population. They are of the same blood, of 
the same color, largely of the same language, and filled 
with the same aspirations as yourselves, and are rapidly 
assimilating with you in character and in life. 

With us there is an alien race, different in color, in 



172 Some SoutKern Questions 

life, and with whom as a primordial factor of his being 
the Teuton has strenuously refused to assimilate in 
blood, in social existence, or in government. 

Mr. Chairman, to emphasize this sad condition of 
the South, let me say that at the time the South was 
placed under the feet of the Negro and his white allies, 
not more than one-tenth of them could read and write ; 
and as late as 1880 only three-tenths were able to read 
and write. 

It was Mr. L<incoln's intention to bring the States 
back into the Union with the white man in control. 
This is clearly shown by his proclamation in reference 
to North Carolina. His plan was to bring back this 
State with the voters who were qualified in i860. 
These voters, of course, were the white men. Later 
he was in favor of allowing the intelligent Negro to 
vote. He penetrated more profoundly than any other 
statesman of his era into the deep mystery of the civil 
life in the South, surrounded as it was by its peculiar 
political and social conditions. He thoroughly under- 
stood, imbued as he was with the very genius of free 
government, and believing in the exercise of the fran- 
chise by all of the people, that the conditions sur- 
rounding the South were peculiar and unique, and 
that the franchise provisions applicable to the country 
at large would not apply to the South. He wrote 
Governor Hahn of I,ouisiana : " Now you are about to 
have a convention, which, among other things, will 
probably define the elective franchise, I barely suggest 



TKe Elective FrancKise 173 

for your private consideration, whether some of the 
colored people may not be let in ; as, for instance, the 
very intelligent, and especially those who have fought 
gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in 
some trying time to come to keep the jewel of liberty 
in the family of freedom." 

With that marvellous intuition into the innermost 
workings of the people's being, Mr. Lincoln saw then, 
that which cost us a third of a century of heart burn- 
ings and misunderstandings and loss to learn, that the 
governmental problem of the North and West to be 
solved by a people of the same race and color, homo- 
geneous in educational and civil traditions, was totally 
different in every element from that to be worked out 
by the South, with its Caucasian civilization inter- 
mixed with, and oftentimes dominated in numbers by, 
a race different in color, genius, and tradition, and just 
emerging from centuries of slavery. But Mr. Lincoln's 
death blasted the hopes of the South, and in the war 
between Congress and Andrew Johnson, the South fell 
heir to the horrors of Reconstruction. 

Then arose the Kuklux trouble, and there were 
passed many improvident laws by the South, and then 
occurred on both sides those matters, which in the 
heated state of public feeling, were the cause of the 
North and South not abiding together in peace and in 
unity. Truly it was a situation for the South which 
had no hope in its dark bosom, and however decided 
would mean ultimate hurt to her and her institutions. 



174 Some SovitKern Qtaestions 

The men of the South saw the sad ruin in character 
and credit, the paralysis of pubHc and private business, 
and that personal and political crime was open and 
unabashed. They did exactly that which the people 
of the North would have done under the same circum- 
stances. They asserted themselves and saved the State 
from the ruin impending and drove the Negro from 
control. Yet, on the other hand, they knew that they 
violated the letter of the Constitution and infringed 
upon the fundamental theory of our government. 
Every intelligent Southern man knew this and re- 
gretted the situation. Mr. Chairman, was there ever 
such a condition presented to a free people ? To have 
bowed to the will of the majority, we would have 
beheld a land 

"Its shores 
Strewn with the wreck of fleets, where mast and hull 
Drop away piecemeal; battlemented walls 
Frown idly, green with moss, and temples stand 
Unroofed, forsaken by the worshippers. 
Foundations of old cities and long streets 
Where never fall of human foot is heard 
Upon the desolate pavement." 

To do otherwise was to offend against the funda- 
mental laws governing the life of a free government. 

Now, Sir, the South intends to do away with this 
anomalous condition. The men of the South under- 
stand the lesson their enforced condition has compelled 
them to teach. They intend to work out this question 



XKe E-lective FrancHise 175 

under the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. 
The reason why this absolute fairness has been delayed 
was the memory of the Negro rule and control in the 
South, and, further, that the South did not intend to 
place its future with all of its marvellous possibilities 
in the control of the forces which wrecked it during 
the Reconstruction period. Whilst holding the political 
situation in their own hands, they propose to treat the 
Negro fairly under the Constitution of the country. 
Throughout the whole of the South, there has been, 
and is now, a movement for constitutional conventions 
in the direction of pure government. These conven- 
tions are not, as some understand, to get rid of the vote 
of the Negro. The white man dominates politically in 
every Southern State. The conventions are in the 
direction of constitutional government and pure elec- 
tions and fairness to the Negro, and are intended as a 
legal and honest method by which the Southern States 
can relieve themselves of their trouble and perplexity 
and do justice to the election laws of the country, and 
at the same time preserve control of their civilization. 

I have no intent or desire to avoid a fair statement of 
the situation ; but I am placing it before you in all 
honesty and simplicity in order that you will under- 
stand that the South is attempting, with the little light 
before us, to work out for this country the question 
which tangles our feet in whatever path we would 
turn. 

Personally, I have earnestly urged that the South 



176 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

should adopt an inflexible educational or property 
basis, administered fairly for both white and black. I 
believe that this would work out the question, and the 
South is gradually arriving at the conclusion that it 
can, by constitutional methods, preserve the spirit of the 
Constitution and save its civilization. It desires and 
intends to give the negro his constitutional rights, and 
has only been heretofore debarred from so doing by the 
fear of the destruction of that which a state holds most 
sacred. The energy of the South is being earnestly 
devoted to educating the Negro in order to, as quickly 
as possible, make him a good and intelligent citizen. 
Groping in the dark, we grant that oftentimes wrong 
has been done to the Negro. This the South deplores, 
whilst not for a moment intending to assent to the truth 
of the thousands of the baseless charges which have 
been made against her in the treatment of this question. 
In our impoverishment, we have given one hundred 
million dollars to the education of the Negro, and we 
are to-day impartially dividing with him our every 
dollar, in order that we may work out for this country 
and for mankind the darkest riddle which has ever con- 
fronted and perplexed civilization. Whilst the South 
is doing her part, the Negro has responded by 
progress in education and those virtues which will 
ultimately make him useful instead of a menace to 
civilization. 

The settlement of this momentous question cannot be 
accomplished in a day. Time must be one of the chief 



TKe Elective FrancKise 177 

factors. In adjusting the political relations of the 
Negro and the white man, living together, with no 
precedent to guide, there have necessarily resulted 
many mistakes. But the situation will be worked out 
with justice to the Negro, with honor to the white man 
and in consonance with the spirit of the Constitution. 
In the progress towards constitutional government in 
the South, although believing firmly in universal suf- 
frage, many of us, friends of the Negro, have advocated 
a franchise limitation as an immediate step from the 
anomaly of to-day and towards the consummation of 
fair government for white and black. 

This seemingly anomalous position has not been 
brought about by a spirit of unfairness towards the 
Negro or by instability of our political opinion. It does 
not furnish any argument for the imposition of a fran- 
chise limitation throughout the country. The situation 
must be looked at under the plain light. The men who 
believe in a franchise limitation for the South are un- 
questioned as to their friendship for the Negro; but 
they know and understand the conditions in the South. 
These conditions are unprecedented in political history, 
unexampled in civilization, and absolutely unique in 
their relations to the other portions of the country. In 
the country at large universal suffrage means civil 
splendor, commercial and personal welfare, pure gov- 
ernment, peace, and progress. In the South it means 
prostration of the State, anarchy, commercial and per- 
sonal ruin, and a war of races, destructive to State and 



178 Some SovitKern Questions 

social goveniment. Upon one principle, however, tlie 
relations of the South to the country at large are upon 
the same level ; and that is, whatever franchise limita- 
tions may be imposed by the South to preserve her 
civilization should be administered with unsparing im- 
partiality alike for white and black, and the South 
intends that this shall be. 

It is important to consider for a moment the effect 
which the era of universal suffrage has had upon the 
relation between the States and the National Govern- 
ment. The early sentiment was that universal suffrage 
would retard the growth of the nationality of this gov- 
ernment. In other words, having the ancient democra- 
cies in mind, not differentiating between them and our 
representative system of government, many feared that, 
under a wide franchise, popular license would trend in 
the direction of the increase in the powers of the States. 
At that period the great preponderating powers of the 
States led to the free entertaining of this view. In 
the majority of conflicts with the National Govern- 
ment, the States had won. They had taken advantage 
of every question and doubt as to the reservation of 
their powers under the Constitution, and had most 
vigorously availed themselves of these reserved rights. 
Thus, at this period, the States had grown relatively 
so powerful that it led De Tocqueville to declare 
that the Union was only shadow, and that ulti- 
mately its existence would be endangered by the 
preponderating power of the States in the social com- 



TTKe Elective FrancHise 179 

pact. The present condition of the balance in our 
social affairs shows the complete failure in the prog- 
nostications of that day as to the effect of universal 
suffrage upon the governmental relations under the 
social compact. In the years of universal suffrage in 
this country the balance of the government has been 
restored, and instead of popular license and national 
disintegration, and the increase in the already over- 
weening powers of the States, the National Government 
has been relatively strengthened. The governmental 
condition of to-day shows the great skill of its crea- 
tion, for whilst the war left the National Government 
with vastly increased powers, yet the causes of friction 
have been largely removed between the concurrent 
powers under the Constitution, and there is to-day a 
better feeling between the States and the National 
Government than has ever been known in the history 
of our country. It gives a great impetus to optimism 
when we observe that, notwithstanding the great war, 
which was practically a war of the General Govern- 
ment against the sovereignty of the States, the States 
are to-day determined to be as absolutely sovereign 
within their constitutional powers as ever before. 
The chief fear of to-day, however, is the tendency of 
greatly increased power in the General Government, 
as the danger was fifty years ago in the enlarged 
powers on the part of the States. This tendency is 
the danger of the day. 

Public sentiment, appreciating the tremendous power 



i8o Some SoxitKem Qviestions 

which the General Government exhibited in the great 
civil conflict, and its consequent preponderance neces- 
sarily arising from that exhibition of strength, has 
been earnestly aroused in the past few years in the 
direction of preserving intact the constitutional rights 
of the States. As a great scholar well observes, ** This 
reliance (upon national authority), however, is con- 
trolled and regulated by the deep-seated consciousness 
of the people that the rights of the separate States are 
not to be superseded by the acts of the Central Gov- 
ernment, and that the rights of towns, counties, and 
districts are to be protected against the arbitrary in- 
terference of legislation." In this relation is peculiarly 
needed that "righting sense" of the people, undimin- 
ished in power, to watch and preserve within their 
respective bounds those delicate relations between the 
State and General Government. 

lyCt us for a moment investigate the relations of the 
citizens each to the other, and, practically speaking, the 
efiect of universal suffrage upon the classes. This has 
been the subject of infinite discussion by the learned. 
Will you pardon me for an observation as to the general 
consideration of this important question by the scholars? 
They have largely affected the public sentiment among 
the higher classes. The want of breadth in the eluci- 
dation of this question of universal suffrage by the 
learned emboldens me, a plain man, to ask for a deeper 
and more real knowledge of the people on the part 
of the learned of our country. They have wrought 



XKe Elective FrancKise i8i 

infinite harm to the body politic by opinions betraying 
want of knowledge of the people themselves, the real 
subject of discussion. Do not the conclusions of the 
learned as to the great public too frequently result from 
investigation and experience alike limited and indis- 
criminate in application ? Do not those in high places 
most frequently neglect the strenuous exercise of that 
ars profunda, that deeper penetration into the very life 
and genius of the people ? That subtle spirit, that vital 
essence of the people's being, is the most diflScult to 
grasp, and it can only be comprehended by a know- 
ledge of the life, the thoughts, the habits, and the 
desires of the people, acquired by an investigation alike 
profound as it is rare. 

The destiny of a nation cannot be forecast and its 
civic phenomena adequately explained from experience 
touching the abuse of one privilege, the failure of one 
system, or the wrongdoing of one class. The study of 
the effect of a system in the city, with its peculiar rela- 
tions to the body politic, will not sufiice as the founda- 
tion of an opinion as to the country at large. The 
study is too narrow. Rather, to control the thought, 
and direct our hope, there should be a study of those 
eternal principles which are deep in the very spirit and 
breath of the people and which alone guide the destiny 
of a nation. I repeat that this experience can only 
arise from a wide study of the people itself. Appre- 
ciating those who love the books and respecting ' ' that 
wit of wisdom," still the highest essential in investi- 



1 82 Some SovitHern Qiaestions 

gating the people is that rare combination of mind 
and experience which can both touch elbows with the 
thought of the people and deduce therefrom a right 
conclusion. I have in my mind a book of a teacher 
of youth, who, had he lived in the Athenian days, 
would surely have owed a cock to Asclepius, wherein, 
with the authority of high place, he teaches the 
youth that the majority of those who predominate 
in the exercise of universal suffrage are vicious and 
ignorant and prefer the gambling den, the brothel, the 
saloon, and the prize ring to the exercise of pure 
politics. Sir, such deductions, their foundations un- 
true in fact and defective in investigation, lower the 
moral tone of the student and dishonor the citizens of 
the Republic. Against such teachings, in the name 
of the millions of clean-hearted and pure-breathed men 
whose eyes never beheld the gilding of the saloon and 
whose souls never knew the infection of the brothel, 
and who, whilst the furniture may be scanty and the 
floors bare, hallow the rented house with the unspeak- 
able glory of an honest, pure, and independent citizen- 
ship, whose hands, though hardened with work, would 
spurn the touch of unearned gold, and whose hope and 
ambition is to leave to their children that same in- 
corruptible citizenship bequeathed to them by the 
Fathers of the Republic, and in the name of the youth 
of our country, whose minds are corrupted by such 
teachings, I enter my earnest protest and dissent. To 
those who discuss without kindliness or moderation 



TKe Elective KrancKise 183 

the great problems of our national existence, I beg 
that from the poet of darkened Persia they will read 
that lesson of moderation which they have failed to 
grasp under a century of free government : 

** And Abraham sat in the door of his tent about the 
going down of the sun. 

*' And behold, a man bowed with age came from the 
way of the wilderness, leaning on a staff. 

' ' And Abraham arose and met him, and said, Turn 
in, I pray thee, and Abraham baked unleavened bread 
and they did eat. 

' ' And when Abraham saw that the man blessed 
not God, he said unto him. Wherefore dost thou not 
worship the most high God, Creator of heaven and 
earth ? 

" And the man answered and said, I do not worship 
the God thou speakest of, neither do I call upon his 
name. 

" And Abraham's zeal was kindled against the man, 
and he arose and drove him forth with blows into the 
wilderness. 

"And, at midnight, God called upon Abraham, 
saying, Abraham, where is the stranger ? 

" And Abraham answered and said, lyord, he would 
not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name, 
therefore I have driven him out before my face into 
the wilderness. 

"And God said, Have I borne with him these 
hundred ninety and eight years, and clothed him, 



184 Some SovitHem Qviestions 

notwithstanding his rebellion against me, and could st 
not thou, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one 
night? 

" And Abraham said, Let not the anger of the Lord 
wax hot against his servant, for lo I have sinned, 
forgive me, I pray thee. 

" And Abraham arose and went forth into the wil- 
derness, and returned with the man to the tent, and 
when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him away 
on the morrow with gifts." 

Those who look with doubt and uncertainty upon 
our future remind me that the spirit of democracy in 
our country is weakening the foundations of home, 
and is dimming the light which touches, with the 
glory of holiness, the marital bed. I am not invading 
the realm of sociology. The purity of the people is the 
foundation of the civil life of the Republic. It is the 
very foundation of our political existence. To prove 
the tendencies towards the increasing laxity of our 
civil life under the democracy of the day, I am con- 
fronted with statistics showing the increase of divorces. 
Sir, I understand not the jargon of statistics, nor do I 
trust their rigid conclusions when they conflict with 
the experiences of my daily life. To believe them is 
to believe that the veil of the temple has surely been 
rent in twain and the sacred homes of the people have 
been filled with " Gorgons, Hydras, and Chimeras 
dire." I deny the foul aspersion. I have lived my 
life with the people of the mountains and the country. 



TKe E,lective FrancKise 185 

Here the vast bulk of the population live. Here, be- 
side the streams, and on the majestic plains, and in the 
mountains, is the fate of the Republic. By the streams 
and in the mountains in all the days has God talked 
with the people, and here, away from the hurry of the 
city, is the place for the true contemplation of these 
vital questions of the Republic. No statistical measur- 
ing-rod can reach the homes of the people. Sir, in my 
lifetime I have seen the whole order of life changed, 
and by the thunderous tramp of your legions in blue 
our Southern civilization was shaken to ruin. Amid 
its wreck and revolution, sundered from every tie 
except that of the little ones, with a guard as of the 
fiery Cherubim warning her away from the gates of 
home, alone the mother and wife of the South was 
touched by no change or revolution. Turning calmly 
without a sigh from the gentleness of home, she gave 
herself to the higher, sweeter, and better life, and her 
nature has not lost its purity and gentleness, nor has 
her soul been touched or hurt with the hardness of life. 
Despite casuist and statistician, above the glory of 
man's effort and success, more potent than power or 
prestige, there is one spirit untouched, and that is the 
central figure of American life, the wife and the mother 
of the American home. To-night, under the stars 
when the day is done, if, with noiseless fingers, we could 
touch the veil of the temple in the homes of the people, 

" Those everlasting gardens, 

"Where angels walk and the seraphs are the wardens," 



i86 Some SoutKern Qviestions 

we would behold the mother, pure and unspotted, 
gathering to her knees the little ones, white robed and 
clean, and we would hear, like incense, ascending to 
the open gates, from the prairie and the mountain, and 
from mansion house and farm and city, over the borders 
of this mighty Republic, from the myriads of homes, 
the sweetest prayer ever murmured by worshipping 
lips: 

" Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep; 
If I should die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take." 

Here still dwells the immortality of the Republic, 
with its plenitude of pure civil life, and surely here 
lives, in ancient vigor, the true spirit of our greatness. 
In the homes of otu" Republic is our hope of civil 
immortality, and that hope rises triumphant over all 
difficulties and complications. For around their sacred 
portals lingers the golden sunshine, which is perennial, 
and whose splendor is not dimmed by the march of the 
day. No, sir, the spirit of democracy has crowned the 
head of the American home with an increasing manli- 
ness known in no other country under the sun, and 
has touched the life of his helpmate with a spirit of 
virtue and gentleness which grows in its marvellous 
beauty as the years march along. 

It is stated with all the power of authority that one 
of the tendencies of universal suffrage has been to in- 
crease the power of party and to render political strife 



XHe Elective KrancKise 187 

more acute, and thus make party more dangerous to 
the Republic. Is this our experience ? It seems to me 
that the result of the exercise of universal suffrage has 
been to cause more independence of party and more 
moderation than ever before. I appeal, Sir, to the 
facts. In the last election, whose mighty throbs we 
still feel, there was a greater "scratching" of ballots 
than ever before known in the history of this govern- 
ment. The Independent in politics has largely been 
the growth of the last quarter of a century. A careful 
investigation of the ballots, an examination of the 
ballot commissioners, and an analysis of the vote in 
ten separate States, disclose, as never before, the 
gradual disenthrallment of the voter from party. I 
call your attention to another statement which, but to 
mention, carries with it this conclusion. There was 
never before in your experience or in mine a time when 
the independent voter was so important and so abso- 
lutely Independent. Aye, more than this, there has 
never been a period since this country was divided by 
well-defined parties when a man could, with so much 
equanimity and with as little criticism, turn his back 
upon his party and upon all of his political traditions 
as to-day. The protest against the corruption of the 
day is growing in character and power as never before. 
In the South, where politics is a passion and where 
party fealty is of the first importance, the Independent 
in politics is the greatest political phenomenon of our 
time. Consider this question somewhat more broadly 



i88 Some SoxitKern Questions 

than in relation to the mere voter. I^ook for a moment 
at the attitude of the press to party. We have seen 
within six years dozens of great newspapers of the 
country break away from party aflSliation. The country 
within the last ten years has been filled with political 
clubs and associations, growing in power and import- 
ance, with independence of party as the sole reason for 
their existence. With the rise of these powerful asso- 
ciations has marched the magazine and newspaper, 
entirely independent as to political control, and reserv- 
ing the right to criticise or to oppose party. 

What has been the tendency of the day under this 
system in reference to the acerbity and virulence of 
party politics? Under the existence of universal 
suffrage the trend of sentiment has been distinctly 
towards moderation. The scandals, the hatred, the 
vilification, and the rancor of the old days of the 
Republic are to-day almost unheard of and would not 
be tolerated. I^t us, for a moment, turn for proof to 
the past and listen to the turbulent sounds from the 
golden days of the Republic. Says Mr. Jefferson, 
* ' You and I have formerly seen warm debates and 
high political passions. But gentlemen of different 
politics would then speak to each other and separate 
the business of the Senate from that of society. It is 
not so now. Men who have been intimate all their 
lives cross the street to avoid meeting and ttu-n their 
heads another way lest they should be obliged to touch 
their hats." 



XHe Elective FrancKise 189 

iy De Tocqueville quotes the language of tlie first news- 
paper upon which his eyes fell when he arrived in this 
country, and the expression therein contained concern- 
ing the President would not to-day be tolerated. Con- 
trast this with the American experience of a great 
Englishman of to-day. Says Professor Bryce : ' ' Parti- 
sans are reckless, but the mass of the people lends itself 
less to acrid partisanship than it did in the time of 
Jackson, or in those first days of the Republic, which 
were so long looked back to as a sort of heroic age. 
Public opinion grows more temperate, more mellow, 
and assuredly more tolerant. Its very strength dis- 
poses it to bear with opposition or remonstrance. It 
respects itself too much to wish to silence any voice." 

An authority of this city teaches that under our 
system of universal sufirage the people are losing their 
love of the united country, and that the bonds binding 
us together are loosening. Sir, this cannot be the 
tendency of to-day. Will you allow an illustration to 
the contrary from my own experience ? 

Sir, I recall the days of the sorrow of the South, and 
I well remember, when I stood by the open grave of a 
Southern soldier. Our armies had been overwhelmed, 
Virginia was invaded and ruined, and our hope was 
gone. War, ruthless and unsparing, and Desolation, 
grim and terrible, galloped booted and ready over the 
once fair land, and Death, their ever-present hand- 
maiden, filled the hills with sorrow. The green grass 
was under the mire of the hoof-beat, and the hope of 



igo Some SoxitKern Qxiestions 

food for the women and little ones was as blasted as 
the white poverty of the fields. Only the cedar and 
the pine wore their dresses of green as if to touch the 
despair of the present with a tinge of the hope of the 
future. To the little group of women and children and 
aged men the habiliments of woe prescribed by custom 
were not, for war even denied to those who mourned 
that gentle clinging to those who had gone as expressed 
by the outward tokens of sorrow. Here, an old bit of 
black lace ; there, a worn piece of crepe, a black belt, 
a faded hat, mute evidences of the desire to make that 
show hallowed by our custom and love, only too 
plainly evidenced that grief and ruin had in this de- 
voted land touched their strong hands. Lifting his 
eyes to the skies, which alone were bright, the aged 
man of God read the wail of the Jews in a foreign land : 

" By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down ; yea, 
we wept when we remembered Zion. 

"We hanged our harps upon the willows in the 
midst thereof. 

' ' For there they that carried us away captive re- 
quired of us a song ; and they that wasted us required 
of us mirth, saying. Sing us one of the songs of Zion, 

"How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange 
land?" 

When the ripening harvest was casting its glory of 
yellow grain over our renewed land, verily a fair land 
bursting with plenty and happiness, within this year, 
standing by a soldier's grave, once the wailing place 



XKe Elective KrancHise 191 

of a conquered people, I listened to a great son of the 
North, our honored guest, once a soldier in blue, once 
our enemy, speaking in burning words to the Ustening 
soldiers of Robert B. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, telling 
them of the glory of this Union, hallowed by our suflFer- 
ings and sorrow, and doubly blest with the love and 
peace and happiness of the people. Yea, sir, 

" Hands are clasped in joy unspeakable. 
Old sorrows are forgotten now, 
Or but remembered to make sweet the hour 
That overpays them ; wounded hearts that bled 
Or broke are healed forever." 

When I have witnessed this most exceeding love, 
then forsooth there must be needed something more 
potent than statistics marshalled under a midnight 
lamp to convince me that new influences arising from 
the political system of to-day can impair the peaceful 
though secret bonds of love binding together the soul 
and life of this great and free people. 

A fierce indictment against universal suffrage is 
that it accentuates and intensifies the tyranny of the 
majority. The Fathers did not so fear this tyranny, 
and they had before them the disturbing ideas of the 
French Democracy. Mr. Jefferson, in his enumeration 
of the essential principles to be observed by the people, 
places among the first as most sacred that "absolute 
acquiescence in the decisions of the majority the vital 
principle of Republics from which there is no appeal 



192 Some SoxitKern Questions 

but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent 
of despotism." But, sir, do we have in the Re- 
public the tyranny of the majority? Filled with 
the fundamental ideas of the Fathers, and permeated 
with the genius of free government, this has been a 
government where the decrees of the majority become 
the potent will of the whole people. Here is the 
essential dijGference between our institutions of free 
government and the fierce dictatorships of Southern 
and Central America masquerading under the fair 
guise of free government. Here the principles of the 
majority are assimilated and carried to fruition by the 
whole people. Whilst this is the theory and practice of 
our government, yet the people have wisely conceived 
the idea that, whilst they acquiesce in the control- 
ling will of the majority, yet that the theory of the 
majority should be worked out by the practical assist- 
ance of the minority. Hence, with universal suffrage 
was born the theory of minority representation, and it 
has grown as part of its life and being. This is the 
creation of the last half century, and again it is the 
people protecting against themselves. The desire to 
preserve the rights of the minority has grown with the 
people in representative and district elections, and its 
principle is practically adopted to-day in the State and 
National Government in the exercise of minority re- 
presentation on every important governmental board 
and state institution. Its handmaiden, Civil Service 
Reform, although suflfering the delays incident to all 



TKe Elective FrancKise 193 

reforms, has taken away one of the most potent criti- 
cisms against the rule of the people, and is day by day 
making fitness and qualification the essentials of place 
in the government. The rapid extension of this 
salutary principle, under the rule of, and accentuated 
by, the free sufirage of the people, is gradually but 
surely removing any danger to the Republic from the 
tyranny of the majority. 

I would be false to the spirit which brought me here 
were I to say there are no dangers and no fears in the 
tendencies of the Democracy. Sir, there are dangers. 
There are tendencies which excite the apprehension, if 
not the fear, of those who love the Republic and hallow 
its faiths and ancestral truths. When there are no 
fears and no apprehensions in this free government, 
the world will again witness a people which only wants 
bread and the games, and whose genius is emasculated 
and whose vitality is stagnant. The people are meet- 
ing the vital questions arising from the relations of the 
State to the General Government and the equally im- 
portant question of the citizen's relation to the State, 
and will solve these epochs wisely for free government. 

There is to-day arising an era or epoch in our national 
life of far more reaching importance than either of the 
others. These epochs must arise in popular govern- 
ment. In aristocracies and monarchies the strong, 
central, guiding hand holds the government in the 
channel and on the quiet sea ; and whilst the ship of 
state does not rock, yet it makes less progress than 
13 



194 Some SoutHern Questions 

when driven by the vigorous strength of a whole people. 

An era arises insidiously, and in its womb, hidden 
from the people, are the seeds of disaster and death to 
popular liberty. Its tendency must be grasped by a 
people, and its progress stopped, or it will become in- 
herent and the epoch will burst its bounds and the 
Rubicon will have been passed dividing the people 
from its liberties. The tendencies of an epoch touch- 
ing the State, guarded by written constitutional limit- 
ations, such as the relation of the citizen to the State, 
or the relation of the States to the General Government, 
can be watched. The infraction of this class of rights 
cannot be insidious. The written law is engraved alike 
on the brazen posts as well as on the hearts of the 
people, and the approach of danger can be seen by 
all men. The epoch or tendency to be dreaded, as 
containing the very seeds of death to the institutions 
of a free people, is the era carrying with it the hidden 
dangers involving the division of the people into classes, 
the changing of the relations of the people to them- 
selves, the change of sentiment as to the ideas of govern- 
ment, and the corruption of the moral tissues and life 
of the people resulting therefrom. Here, Sir, is the era 
of danger to a free people, for it is insidious in its 
approach, and the rights impinged upon are not written. 

Read the history of free government in all ages and 
in all lands, and from all comes the melancholy message 
that free government has always been destroyed from 
within and never from without. It is one broad, 



TKe Elective FrancKise 19S 

marked, unvarying path — a young people filled with 
freedom, simple, economical, patriotic, the widening 
of its power, ships on the seas, luxury at home, and 
influence abroad, privileges for some, discontent for 
others, the rich and the poor, a Cleon haranguing the 
people and a Caesar at the Capital. A tyro can write 
the simple story. It seems to me that this epoch of 
our civil life, when the people have largely passed the 
constructive and creative stages of the nation's exist- 
ence, when the great fundamental questions of govern- 
ment have been settled, and the people are practically 
engaged upon these matters which shape for all time 
the texture and mold of the individual and class relation 
and existence, is the most important to us and to 
mankind. 

The epoch of to-day into which the people are passing 
is the era of Commercialism. Its relation is most im- 
portant to the question under discussion. Sir, with 
homage for its power, do I mention the spirit of Ameri- 
can Commercialism impelled by the restless genius of 
this people. The Hanging Gardens would be but a 
plaything of a day for one of our merchant princes, and 
all the wealth of Rome garnered from Asia Minor and 
Gaul and Egypt and all of the tribute lands would not 
sufl&ce to supply for one year the needs of the kings 
of American commerce. Never was there such power. 
It has surrounded this continent as a maiden by her 
girdle. It has pervaded every class. It has turned its 
eyes to the world, and has grasped in its strong hands 



tg6 Some SovitKem Questions 

the whole universe. It has flung France aside from 
its path as a puny child. It has stridden past Ger- 
many, has throttled England, and stands to-day beside 
the only power, its comparative equal in future com- 
mercial rule. Imperial Russia. It is building bridges 
in Africa to bear the tramp of the British legions. Its 
rail to-night lies under the snows of Siberia, and be- 
hind its engines are heard the strange mutterings of the 
bearded Cossack and fierce Ukranian. It is clothing 
the Celestial in cotton, and it is cutting the bearded 
wheat in Argentina. Strange tongues are whispering 
over its cables strung under strange seas. It is selling 
knives in Shefl&eld and cloth in France, and is lending 
money to London. It builds warships for the Czar 
and sewing-machines for Japan. It digs coal under the 
winds of Magellan, and gold and diamonds in Africa. 
Its ships gather commerce from every port, and it buys 
and sells in every land. It waits not on steam and 
sail, but shakes the continent in its impatient hands 
that the waters of the Orient and Occident may flow 
together to do its bidding. It is omnipresent and almost 
omnipotent. Was there ever such power? It tosses 
millions as the boy flips the marble at his play, and 
its colossal combinations of wealth touch with their 
golden fingers every useful thing. This unprecedented 
growth of commercial life, necessarily expressing itself 
through corporate existence, the growth of interstate 
commerce, the building and operation of the railroad, 
the telegraph, and the telephone, and the various won- 



TKe Elective FrancHise 197 

derful and far-reacliing combinations, demanding im- 
mediate results to be effective, necessarily restive at all 
interference, all being the expression of the commer- 
cialism of the day, affecting every condition of indi- 
vidual, social, national, and commercial life, demands, 
as never before, the preservation of that essence of 
our national life and being, the spirit of American 
democracy, in all of its mighty strength and unshorn 
of any of its power. 

Now, sir, do not understand me in the slightest 
degree to underestimate the power for good possessed 
by wealth. I make my obeisance to the great desire 
on the part of wealth to send light where there is dark- 
ness, to touch the sick and the helpless with soothing 
care, and to erect on the broadest foundation its monu- 
ment to learning and the arts. This is a commercial 
nation, and the desire and power to acquire and use 
wealth within its legitimate bounds is to be honored 
by every good citizen. What, then, are the dangers 
of commercialism? What are its tendencies? Can 
these tendencies, if dangerous to the Republic, be 
eliminated by the reimposition of a restrictive fran- 
chise? The danger to the Republic from this era is 
that the legitimate spirit of commercialism will become 
political commercialism. It is rapidly so becoming. I 
submit, sir, that this epoch of political commercialism, 
if unchecked in its tendencies, will destroy the true 
ideal of the Republic. In our natural haste to grasp 
and utilize the marvellous material conditions vouch- 



198 Some SovitKern Questions 

safed to us by a new continent, we are losing sight 
of the republican principles inculcating those high 
and noble virtues which attended the birth of the Re- 
public and which should live as its very texture. The 
love of the welfare of the whole people, the wealth of 
patriotism, that pride of high character of those in high 
places, that jealous desire for an exalted ideal for the 
nation, that thorough knowledge of the aims of the 
government looking not alone to self- utilization, seem 
to me to be lessening under the fierce assault of those 
conditions which allow the citizen to such a vast extent 
to better his material welfare. It will surely beget a 
lower standard of civil life and desire. It is weakening 
the true spirit of democracy. Under the spirit as well 
as the letter of our institutions we can have no patent 
of nobility, but have we not established a class with 
success in accumulation as its real patent of nobility ? 
Are we not making the standard of our ideal of citizen- 
ship, that of breadth of acres and numbers of stocks 
and wealth of possessions, rather than that of states- 
manship, profound learning, exalted patriotism, and 
unselfish citizenship ? Would not the people to-day 
prefer Themistocles rather than listen to Aristides ; and 
with the dominance of this spirit, so variant from the 
true idea of democracy, would not Jove soon fill the 
other urn with disastrous fulness. The real spirit of 
democracy has been tumbling empires, and overthrow- 
ing kingdoms, and lifting the peoples of the world to a 
better and higher condition of life. Would not a change 



XHe Elective FrancHise 199 

in its very life and texture bereave it of its real glory 
and power ? Oh, my country, 

" If thou do'st consent 
To this most cruel act, do but despair ; 
And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread 
That spider ever twisted from her womb 
Will serve to strangle thee." 

The true ideal of democracy as exemplified by this 
government is to bear to the world the sublime message 
of help, and implant in the heart of the nations the 
spirit of hope of freedom and of improvement in every 
condition, social and governmental. Are we not chang- 
ing the true spirit of this high ideal and giving to the 
world the message of almost infinite material power, of 
ability to trade and hold with the strong hand and 
nothing more? I was looking once at a statue of 
Hercules, chiselled by a forgotten hand. It was different 
from all others I had ever seen and represented the 
ideal of my country. High intelligence beamed from 
its lofty brow and cultured features; withal it was 
strong and powerful, yet its strength was graced by 
beauty and activity. Nearby was the old ideal which 
we knew so well, thews of brass, a jaw of iron, and 
the lowering brow, the idealization alone of unmixed 
power. Are we not nearing this ideal of national life ? 
Do not, I pray you, Mr. Chairman, think me wanting 
in the feeling of hospitality or in that spirit of high 
appreciation of your courtesy, or that I am filled with 
an impossible spirit of knight-errantry, when I stand 



200 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

here in the heart of this imperial market-place aud 
discuss commercialism. But, sir, I am profoundly im- 
pressed with the dangers of this tendency, and I would 
be recreant to my duty to my country and disingenuous 
to those who are here seeking for the truth, were I to 
dissemble or palter with this most vital question of our 
national life. 

This spirit has been the tendency of all the ages, 
and the broad highway of the world is strewn with 
the whitened bones of the nations which traversed the 
fundamental ideas controlling their creation and life. 
With this tendency so potent and so plain, and arising 
almost universally from the higher and powerful classes, 
should we take the tremendous risk of in anywise in- 
terfering with the power in the hands of the masses 
of the people ? Should we at this time lay our hands 
on the real corrective of this tendency which lies within 
the plainer and poorer people ? 

Sir, this spirit of commercialism, acting through vast 
aggregations, must have power, inordinate power. The 
attainment of some great selfish purpose, the settlement 
of some commercial principle, the procuring of a fran- 
chise belonging to the people, the levying of taxes in 
one or another form, the obtaining of some special class 
privilege, the lifting of a burden from one shoulder to 
be placed upon another, are but a few illustrations of 
the growing power which has not in view the liberty or 
the good of the people, but only looks to selfish ends. 
Then, sir, from this spirit arises that appalling cor- 



TKe Elective FrancKise 201 

ruption which has spread its powerful influence over 
this country and which is to-day the chief danger to 
democratic institutions. 

The fathers of this government, with the prescience 
which characterized their formulation of its principles, 
understood that the danger to a free government lay in 
the corruption of the body politic. It is but a truism 
to again reiterate this fear on the part of the fathers. 
They discounted every great tendency of the democ- 
racy, and in the formulation of their governmental 
principles arranged to counteract these tendencies. 
There have been no unforeseen tendencies of the de- 
mocracy. Yet, sir, they never for a moment under- 
stood the vast influences of commercialism which have 
been sown like the fabled dragons' teeth over the fields 
of the people. Let us here to-day be plain with each 
other. The trouble with the higher classes of the 
American people has been that they have not been 
ingenuous in dealing with this great question. It is 
remarkable, but it is true, that anything that concerns 
the commercial life of the people is touched tenderly 
by the intelligent classes. It seems to me that the 
tendency of the democracy demands plain speaking on 
the part of those who are interested in the immortality 
of our free institutions. The Republic is in danger. 
From what source does the corruption spring, Mr. 
Chairman ? Consider the machinery of a national cam- 
paign of to-day and you will have the answer. What 
is its chief burden? To formulate great principles 



202 Some SovitKern Questions 

touching the domestic, the national, and international 
policies of the government ? No, sir ; it is to raise 
vast sums of money. For what purpose ? It would be 
cowardice for me to state that these enormous sums are 
for any purpose other than for the ultimate corruption 
of the people. Even with the teeming milHons of our 
country these sums could not be legitimately spent. 
Who contributes them ? The plain people, forsooth ? 
Not a dollar ! It comes by the thousands and the 
hundreds of thousands from those who expect to con- 
trol the governmental policies of the country. Through 
this power, and we are not now considering the tre- 
mendous potentialities of the great vested influences in 
active operation upon the body politic, do we see the 
spirit of political commercialism having its dire effect 
upon the people. It bestrides both the parties like a 
colossus, and demands from your Congress and your 
Legislattures the price of its contribution. We are told 
that this interest in politics is solely for protection. In 
some instances such is the case. But in the more fre- 
quent instances the commercial interest is fiercely ag- 
gressive and demands from Congress and Legislature 
some higher tariff or lower tax or special privilege. It 
is true, sir, that the great vested interests of this coun- 
try are often threatened by the demagogue, but only 
infrequently does he have any practical effect upon 
legislation or upon the control of affairs. We are 
frightened with the cry of agrarianism and the enact- 
ment of laws against fair treatment of vested interests ; 



XHe E-lective FrancHise 203 

but, sir, I can count on the fingers of one hand the 
States where the people have passed laws unjustly dis- 
criminating against the great commercial interests of 
this country. Says a great authority : " In no country 
in the world is property as secure as it is with us. The 
guarantees of a constitution now, Mr. Bancroft tells us, 
the oldest in Christendom, have intrenched it against 
public as well as private attack. The British Parlia- 
ment during the last half of the century has destroyed 
vested rights, broken up titles, seized private property 
for private use, in a way that to an American seems 
almost revolutionary . ' ' 

Mr. Bryce observes that bribery does not directly 
touch the people. To differ with Mr. Bryce is to 
invite most serious controversy. The condition of 
to-day, however, shows the fell progress of corruption. 
I have seen the shambles of corruption, filled with 
money from high places, opened wide and with scarcely 
a pretence of concealment until the outraged decency 
of the plain people rebelled. I speak earnestly, because 
it is the vital question of our national life, whether or 
not the ballot-box, the sacred custodian of the liberties 
of the people, reflects the unbiassed and unpurchased 
opinion of the people. From this spirit of corruption 
arise the Machine and the Boss, for without money 
and its attending sinister influences they cannot Hve in 
the pure air of our free institutions. What I am at- 
tempting to inculcate is that political immorality comes 
not from the plain people, but most largely from the 



204 Some SoxitKern Qxiestions 

influences dominated by the higher class, which class 
cannot be reached by the reimposition of a franchise 
limitation. 

How change these tendencies? How guide the 
mighty river so that its flood may fructify the earth 
and all of its peoples? The tendencies towards evil 
are not yet flowing with the blood and do not yet in- 
here into the bone of the people. This change cannot 
be accomplished by Courts of Impeachment and Re- 
moval, the Referendum, the Electoral Delegates, and 
the thousand nostrums which are the mere modifica- 
tions of the machinery of government, unaccompanied 
by the pure controlling spirit of popular life. These 
slight erections would soon be engulfed in the waves 
of a shoreless democracy. It would be binding the 
tide with ropes. The remedy must be deeper. Would 
these tendencies be changed by the reimposition of a 
sufirage limitation ? You could not impose a money 
or a property qualification. An educational or an in- 
telligence qualification would only be considered by 
the people. 

Would the imposition of an intelligence franchise 
affect the general status ? A few brief illustrations 
will show beyond cavil that an intelligence franchise, 
outside of the Southern States, where, by reason of the 
large illiterate negro vote, the conditions are abnormal, 
will not affect the general tendency. I,et us illustrate 
by the States in this Union which have more than 
others felt the effect of political corruption. Take the 



TKe Elective FrancHise 205 

States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. 
These have been pivotal States and they have been 
swamped with money, and it is interesting to consider 
the eflfect of the illiterate vote. The total population 
of New York State at the census of 1890 was 4,822,392. 
The ntunber of illiterates was 266,911, or 5.5 per cent, 
of the whole population. Estimating one vote to every 
four of population, there were, in round numbers, 
1 , 205 , 000 voters, and 66 , 000 illiterate voters. Consider- 
ing one-third of these illiterate voters to be venal, 
which is a large proportion, there would be in New 
York State 22,000 corruptible voters, through illiteracy, 
or one and five-sixths per cent, of the whole voting 
population, which would be reached by the imposition 
of the franchise regulation and thus debarred from 
political life. This leaves the question of the eflfect of 
22,000 venal voters upon practically a million and a 
quarter of intelligent voters. Would it account for the 
great corruption which is alleged to exist in New York 
State? This proportion does not even hold good at 
this period, for the illiterate vote is rapidly decreasing 
throughout the country. In the period between 1870 
and 1890 the illiteracy in New York State decreased 
from 7.1 per cent, to 5.5 per cent. In that proportion 
of decrease the danger of the vote arising from illiteracy 
in New York State would be decreased to about one 
per cent, of the whole voting population, or, in round 
numbers, to about 15,000 votes of her voting population 
of about one and one-half millions. 



2o6 Some SoxitKern Q\iestions 

In this regard let us consider New York City. There 
were 38,420 of illiterate males over ten years of age in 
1890. Of these we will say that there were 35,000 
voters. Allowing one-third of these to be considered 
as venal through illiteracy, we will have about 11,500 
dangerous voters through illiteracy in the whole popu- 
lation of 1,210,000, or less than one per cent, of the 
whole population of the city. 

The population in Pennsylvania in 1890 was 4,063, 134. 
Its illiterate population was 275,353, or 6.8 per cent, of 
the whole population. Its voting population was 
1,015,000, and the illiterate voting population was, in 
round numbers, 68,000. Allowing one-third to be 
corruptible, can we account for the debauchery of 
Pennsylvania politics by the presence of 23,946 who 
are corruptible through illiteracy out of a voting popu- 
lation of over 1,000,000? So with Illinois, with its 
voting population of 726,918, and its illiterate voting 
population of 38,158. Considering 12,719 of these to 
be venal, would that affect the virtue of the remaining 
three-quarters of a million of honest voters? Ohio 
teaches the same lesson in almost identical figures. 
Iowa, with only 3.6 per cent, illiterates in the whole 
population, should certainly not feel the eflfect of its 
illiterate vote of a little more than four thousand upon 
its whole voting population. 

There are other States where the rate of illiteracy is 
much higher, but what is remarkable is the fact that, 
with possibly two exceptions, in those States the cor- 



THe E-lective FrancKise 207 

ruptible element is smaller than in the States where the 
illiteracy is proportionately much less. 

The lesson of these figures is potent, and shows, 
beyond any question, that the imposition of the intel- 
ligence franchise would reach only a very small portion 
of the vote considered venal, and that the illiterate 
vote, even if we consider the whole of it venal, would 
have comparatively small effect, moral or otherwise, 
upon the total voting population. This vote, compara- 
tively infinitesimal in numbers and unimportant by 
reason of its ignorance, further loses its power for evil, 
for it has no cohesiveness, and its strength is dissipated 
between the parties. 

More than this, my experience for years has been 
that the man peculiarly susceptible to corruption is not 
the one who cannot read and write. The potent ele- 
ments of corruption are, primarily, the classes which 
provide the means for corruption, and, secondly, the 
agents whom they employ to use them. These can 
always read and write. The mere mechanical power 
to read and write, add and subtract, will surely not 
afiect a man's political honesty, nor will it make a 
revolution in the sentiment of the people. Some more 
potent corrective to corruption is surely needed. You 
must educate the souls and the lives of the people with 
a higher and better education than that imparted by 
the knowledge of a few elementary books. This edu- 
cation must reach their love of country and envelop 
the people with a nobler and a grander and purer ideal 



2o8 Some SoxitKem Questions 

of citizensliip. What is needed is an education of their 
citizenship, not a mere education of the mind. This is 
the only education which can reach the crisis of to-day. 
More than this, will not the rapidly decreasing illiteracy 
resulting from our system of education soon destroy 
the necessity for an intelligence qualification for the 
franchise ? 

Above these considerations there is a higher and 
more potent objection to the reimposition of the fran- 
chise limitation. This objection touches the very heart 
of the nation's being. It will be turning our lives 
against the advance of modern political science. The 
sovereignty of the whole people is the dominant, ag- 
gressive, and vital principle of to-day throughout the 
world. It has made a democracy of England and a 
republic of France. Its spirit jostles the soldiers in 
Berlin, and it controls monarchical Europe. It shakes 
the Czar sitting on the only despotic throne in civiliza- 
tion. This spirit was born with our Republic, and 
should we be the power to arrest its development 
throughout the nations of the world ? Would it not 
fix the attention of civilization upon class as the model 
we give it upon which to rebuild the institutions of 
government ? Shall we bind the hands of this potent 
spirit and say to the people of the world, struggling 
against king and emperor and class and privilege, that 
the fundamental theory of our government is at fault, 
and that the people cannot be entirely trusted ? Could 
we, in justice to our theory of government, send this 



XHe Elective FrancKise 209 

message to the world after a hundred years of our 
civilizing free government? Shall we place Chinese 
shoes on American feet and put the American citizen 
in a Procrustean bed ? Would it not be an unhappy 
lesson for free government? Should we not rather 
take lessons from our old mother England ? With a 
limited franchise, her elections were corrupt, and her 
administrative abuses were enormous. With a gradual 
change in her franchise to an almost universal suffrage, 
we behold corruption practically abolished and govern- 
mental abuses almost unknown. Verily, the remedy 
must be deeper. Sir, there must be reform, and it 
must come from the higher classes. It must be a 
true reform of the people, and not in the mere ma- 
chinery of suffrage. The protest against the tenden- 
cies of the day must begin with you and me, and its 
action must be continuous and not ephemeral. It 
must not be a crusade, but should be a part of our 
lives. It should not express itself by a sermon once a 
year, illustrated by a trip to the slums under the pro- 
tection of a policeman ; but the inculcation of high 
political morals should be part and parcel of our every- 
day work and teachings of the church. We must de- 
mand that those in control of the affairs of commercial 
influences shall keep their hands away from the people, 
and by precept and example sternly enforce that de- 
mand. The pruning of the political tree must begin at 
the top and not at the root. The danger to the Re- 
public is not to-day to be feared from the lower classes. 



210 Some SoMtHem Questions 

The intelligent and critical classes who are not inter- 
ested in some governmental policy for personal purposes 
have left the practical control of political affairs to the 
other classes of the body politic. This is essentially a 
political nation, and if the intelligent and disinterested 
citizen does not interest himself in governmental affairs 
either those interested for selfish purposes or the ig- 
norant will take control. This government, while a 
free government, will not run itself It is founded upon 
the joint exertion of all of its citizens and not alone on 
the efforts of the corner grocery man and the place 
hunter. The people are guided by intelligence ; and 
the disinterested and intelligent classes in this country, 
if they will but interest themselves in political affairs, 
will be the great potential factors in our political life. 
I repeat that the corrective influence must begin work 
in its own class and enforce its demand for pure 
government. It will surely succeed, for the people 
will earnestly respond to the demand of the disinter- 
ested and intelligent citizen. This government is 
founded upon the people. I believe in the people and 
they love this government and revere its abiding prin- 
ciples. They believe in the permanency of our free 
institutions. They love the Constitution, and whilst 
in moments of haste and passion they may wander, 5^et 
surely will they return to the vital principles of popular 
government. An honest appeal to the patriotism of 
the people has never yet by them been disregarded. 
The reform of mere political machinery will not suffice 



TKe Elective FrancKise 211 

for this critical epoch in our governmental affairs. The 
people must again be summoned to their tents, the 
rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned, 
abiding together as of old, and the palladium of our 
faith, which has ever guided us in all our wanderings, 
must be again brought to our view. Hear again the 
law and listen to the real hope for the correction of the 
wrong tendencies of the Democracy : 

"Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever 
state or persuasion, religious or political ; peace, com- 
merce, and honest friendship with all nations, entang- 
ling alliances with none ; the support of the State 
governments in all their rights, as the most competent 
administrations of our domestic concerns and the surest 
bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies ; the pres- 
ervation of the General Government in its whole con- 
stitutional vigor, as a sheet-anchor of our peace at 
home and safety abroad ; a jealous care of the right of 
election by the people ; a mild and safe correction of 
abuses, which are lopped by the sword of revolution, 
when peaceable remedies are unprovided ; absolute 
acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital 
principle of republics, from which there is no appeal 
but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent 
of despotism ; a well disciplined militia, our best re- 
liance in peace, and for the first moments in war, till 
regulars can relieve them ; the supremacy of the civil 
over the military authority ; economy in the public 
expense, that labor may be lightly burdened ; the 



212 Some SoxitHern Q\jestions 

honest payment of our debts, and sacred preservation 
of the public faith ; encouragement of agriculture, and 
of commerce as its handmaid ; the diflfusion of informa- 
tion, and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the 
public reason ; freedom of religion, freedom of the press, 
freedom of person under the protection of the Habeas 
Corpus ; and trial by juries impartially selected." 

Sir, with the earnestness of one who loves the Re- 
public, I believe that if we will grasp the people more 
closely to us in the bonds of a common patriotism, show 
them an example of high political morality among the 
intelligent and powerful, place before them the ancestral 
faiths as the texture of our national being, touch arms 
and hearts with them as part and parcel of the common 
body politic, public sentiment will become more lofty, 
patriotism will be revived and made more holy, and 
without touching limb or twig of its mighty power, 
democracy will be disenthralled from the tendencies 
which disturb the day. These alone, sir, are the 
mighty agents which will dethrone the Boss, break 
the Machine, correct abuses, and touch again with life 
the altars of the country where deep down in the hearts 
of the people the fires of patriotism are burning clear 
and true. Will this save the Republic ? That it will, 
I again summon as witness the mighty spirit of him from 
whose heart and hand were born the words and spirit 
of our Constitution. "These principles," says the 
Father of the Constitution, " form the bright constella- 
tion that has gone before and guided our steps through 



XKe Elective FrancKise 213 

an age of revolution and reformation. They should be 
the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruc- 
tion, the touchstone by which to try the services of 
those we trust. And should we wander from them in 
moments of error and alarm, let us hasten to retrace 
our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to 
peace, liberty, and safety." 

The witnesses are about us to-night that these words 
are as true to-day as they were in the springtime of the 
RepubUc. The splendor of this presence of the learned, 
the great, and the powerful within the gates of this 
imperial city, listening to the words of a plain moun- 
tain man as he tells of the simple faiths of the Republic, 
fills me with hopes unspeakable for the perpetuity of 
our free government. Aye, sir, I can bear the message 
to the plain people of the country that here, amidst the 
silks and spices, the glitter and power of incompre- 
hensible wealth, the hurry of trade, surrounded by all 
of the novel concomitants of our civilization, still abide 
the simple faiths of our ancestors. 

In my home, on the banks of a sweet Southern river, 
under the shadows of the mountains keeping their 
eternal watch and ward over the men who ceaselessly 
come and go, in the simple room where I read my 
books, stands a marble pedestal surmounted by a 
broken slab of stone. Traced in its brazen binding are 
the momentous words : "On this stone, at Montgomery, 
Alabama, February the eighteenth, 1861, Jefferson 
Davis was inaugurated President of the Confederate 



214 Some SovitKem Qxiestions 

States of America." By some chance of the books, I 
found on the broken, worn piece of stone the Life of 
Abraham Lincoln, and from its white leaves there 
breathed, as the glory of the fruition of a good man's 
prayer, louder and clearer than the relic freighted with 
the precious argosy of our tears, these words of en- 
couragement to those who hope and believe in the 
immortality of our free institutions: "That govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall 
not perish from this earth." 

And may the Almighty, who has glorified the Re- 
public and blessed its people, in all of the days keep 
ever present to you of the city your faith in these al- 
most inspired words, for it is of more permanent value 
to mankind than all the jewels, the gold and the 
silver, and the houses within your encircling waters. 



SOME TENDENCIES OF THE DAY 

WHEN in a great city, surrounded by all of the 
concomitants of the material glory of this 
era, in sight of ships laden for far-ofif lands, 
jostled with hurrying crowds filled with the absorbing 
spirit of the age, I received the courteous note of the 
distinguished president of your college asking me to be 
here on this day, it seemed to be redolent with the spirit 
of the old Virginia and her sacrifices for this country's 
good. The splendid and self-sacrificing labors of your 
president for Virginia surely entitles him to call upon 
her sons to hold up his hands in his earnest and efifective 
work for the re-creation of the glories of the old State. 
Hoping that we may be touched with the spirit of 
Virginia life, I am here to discuss, in my humble 
way, the manner in which we should meet the duties 
of this important era. 

On occasions like this, fraught with such importance 
to the developing minds and energies of the young 
men of my country, I would wish for opportunity for 
that reflection which indulgence from exacting labor 
alone can give. Such, however, cannot be allowed by 
the spirit of the day. Our country is building a 

215 



2i6 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

majestic temple to this era, and it is only when the 
censers are swinging slowly and the keys of our re- 
sounding progress are touched for the moment on a 
minor note, that the humble workman, in the shade of 
lintel and architrave, even for a time, can allow plum- 
met, trowel, and plane to fall from his busy hands. 

In the life of every country, there arrive eras or 
epochs dominated by the spirit or tendency of the time. 
These eras take their course, affecting the country for 
good or for evil, according as their spirit is met by the 
people. The bad effects of an era are as plainly to be 
observed upon the habits and thought of a people as 
the murky waters of a sewer are to be seen discoloring 
a pellucid stream. If, however, an era is wisely met, 
its passing leaves a nation tingling with an exalted 
patriotism. If a nation fails at the crucial time to so 
meet the bad tendency of an era, it is left struggling 
with the seeds of disease. These statements are the 
oft-told tales, the mere truisms of political history, and 
I will not expend the time, which your partiality has 
so kindly allotted to me, in discussing other eras of our 
history ; but, without further delay, we will call to 
your attention the era of to-day, with its power for 
good or for evil, and to your tremendous part in pre- 
serving its real spirit and glory, and in protecting our 
institutions from its inherent dangers. 

The untold wealth garnered from our fertile land; 
the golden incense drifting from the tall towers of 
our manufactories, flooding new countries, enveloping 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 217 

strange races ; the quick grasping within our nervous 
hands of the paramount commercial interests of the 
earth ; the changing of the seat of the world's ex- 
change, following the sun towards its rest, glorifying 
in its course Ctesiphon and Byzantium and Venice 
and Holland and England, and resting for a while in 
its eternal cycle on the shores of this land closest 
towards the West, all plainly show that we, in our 
turn with the other nations, have arrived at our Era 
of Commercialism, 

How preserve the material glory of this era within 
the limitations imperatively demanded by the traditions 
and genius of our people ? How extend its legitimate 
power and concurrently preserve this cotmtry from a 
government of utilitarianism, the mere government of 
wealth and power, with no high ultimate ambition, but 
with sure culminations in the lessening of the impor- 
tance and the decay of the higher virtues of the citizen ? 
At the critical period, Rome did not differentiate be- 
tween the real and higher objects of government and 
the mere acquisition of naked power and wealth. 
Hence she failed. She had no class of citizens ani- 
mated with that high and exalted intelligence where 
the vital essence of government could be fully pre- 
served. She did not retain the high ideals of citizenship, 
but fell into the control of iron force and physical power. 
The result was sure : a Verres in Sicily ; the wide swath 
of proconsular ruin in Africa, in Gaul, and in the East ; 
the ultimate decay of Rome's free institutions; and 



2i8 Some So\itHern Qxiestions 

then "the dark-skinned daughters of Isis, with drum 
and timbrel and wanton mien ; devotees of the Persian 
Mithras ; emasculated Asiatics ; priests of Cybele, 
with their wild dances and discordant cries ; wor- 
shippers of the great goddess Diana ; barbarian captives 
with the rites of Teuton priests ; Syrians, Jews, Chal- 
dean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers." 

The genius of our civilization will allow to us no 
turning back in the tide of the world's trade, nor can 
we change the era of commerce at home. We can only 
guide the course of these great movements. How guide 
them is the living, throbbing question of to-day. How 
change the unvarying rule of history ? How diflferen- 
tiate between the real glory and the inherent dangers 
of this class of epochs, which of all eras have been the 
most fateful to the nations of the earth ? Our answer 
to this riddle of the ages is, that its questions can be 
solved and the real glory of our institutions perpetuated 
by jealously preserving the exalted character of Ameri- 
can citizenship. The most important element of that 
character in the citizen is an intelligence which will 
perceive amidst the grandeur of our material triumphs 
the hidden dangers to our institutions, and whilst foster- 
ing the one will jealously watch the dangers of the other. 

The character of an era of commerce is necessarily 
the most complicated because it is more widely rami- 
fied than any other, and demands the highest degree 
of intelligence to thoroughly comprehend it in its 
thousand different effects upon the life of the people. 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 219 

An epoch of war, or an era of governmental creation, 
administration, or reconstruction, is more easily to be 
comprehended and its respective dangers can be more 
readily grasped, because through the skein, tangled 
though it may be, there is always the one controlling 
thread. Moreover, these last-mentioned epochs are 
generally controlled by some master spirit, whose 
genius has given him supreme control in the exigen- 
cies of the era. Some Cavour or Cromwell, towering 
above his fellows, has understood and firmly grasped 
the conditions of the hour, and the people have fol- 
lowed the master's guidance. This cannot be in an 
era of commercialism. This era is the result of the 
infinite interminglings b}' the people of their more 
than infinite interests. It is the development of the 
elements of a complex civilization with its ramifica- 
tions, which generally are not understood or perceived. 
The era of commercialism concerns the whole people. 
Its spirit laughs with the farmer as the sunshine gathers 
the fields in its ripening embrace. It ripples with the 
waters and sings in the sails as the ship, filled with 
the products of our busy hands, flies to distant lands. 
It_ walks in the crowded marts of the cities and touches 
with its controlling spirit men of every class and con- 
dition. It furnishes an open field for our thrift and 
gratifies us by its independence. It arrives, however, 
at only one height, and its tendency, unwatched and 
unguarded, is to measure men and civilizations and 
governments by its own unchangeable Procrustean 



220 Some SoutHem Qviestions 

rule. It appeals to our love of power and ministers 
to every comfort. It is all-pervading, and within its 
rightful bounds it is right. It is a part of the inner 
life of all the people, and its tendencies cannot be 
guided or arrested by the spirit of one genius, but can 
be reached only by rousing the action of all of the 
people. It is slow-moving and insidious, and to con- 
serve its legitimate glory and arrest its evil tendencies 
there is needed the highest intelligence of all the body 
politic. 

This imposing spectacle of young and intelligent 
manhood assembled here, where " we behold the bright 
countenances of truth in the quiet and still air of de- 
lightful studies, ' ' is the inspiration of my answer that 
the mighty questions of this era can be met and solved 
for the ultimate good of the Republic by the exalted 
intelligence of American citizenship. And here let me 
enter my earnest protest against the half-grounded 
mediocrity which only glances into the outer life of 
the affairs of to-day. The half-taught man will not 
suflSice for the peculiar needs of the citizenship of this 
era. That mediocrity of intelligence which will not 
strive to recognize the high and important and rightful 
place that material power should hold in this Republic 
is not fitted to settle the direction of this era. More 
than this, that mediocrity of intelligence which will 
not differentiate between making wealth and its in- 
fluence and its acquirement the standard of all civic 
excellence, and that radicalism which denies to ma- 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 221 

terial power any influence in the body politic, will but 
increase the dangers of the era. Here will be needed 
the very sublimity of the intelligence of American citi- 
zenship. For whilst energizing and developing the 
life of this commercial era the citizen of this day must 
preserve, unimpaired in pristine vigor, the foundations 
beneath our institutions of liberty. How vast and how 
splendid will be your opportunity ! Consider the field 
upon which to expend your powers, cultivated and 
strengthened within this great institution of learning. 

Whether for national weal or woe is hidden in the 
womb of the future, the isolation of our past has flown 
with the spirit of the day. Every question has broad- 
ened in its scope, and our old system of commercial 
life has changed its verj^ being. ' ' Not rivers and 
provinces and peoples are implicated, but oceans and 
continents and races; not parties and policies, but 
hemispheres and civilizations. The world itself is in- 
volved. On the hinge of these questions may turn, 
is likely to turn, the history of centuries." 

The peopling of our fields, the excess of our products 
beyond our needs, the restless energies of this free 
people, have overthrown the barriers of sea, distance, 
and tradition. The West, no longer aglow with the 
rainbow of promise to the hosts of Europe, but thronged 
with its own earnest people, has turned its face to the 
millions of the East, there to fight out on the broadest 
field of endeavor ever vouchsafed to man the supreme 
contest for the control of the world's commerce. The 



222 Some SoTjtKem Questions 

gauge of its battle is the broad Pacific, and the fruit 
of victory is the control of the civilization of five 
hundred millions of men. To the solemn words of 
the Father of his Country, that " the great rule of 
conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in ex- 
tending our commercial relations, to have with them 
as little political connection as possible," the militant 
spirit of to-day replies: "It is vain that men talk of 
keeping free from entanglements. Nature is omnipo- 
tent, and nations must float with the tide. Whither 
the exchanges flow they must follow, and they will 
follow as long as their vitality endures." 

With this marvellous change in the direction of 
national effort produced by the spirit of the day, I 
will be pardoned for hurriedly placing before you a 
small part of the tremendous responsibilities of the 
American citizen necessarily arising from the spirit 
of the era, which has propelled him into the very 
midst of the most crucial and important affairs of the 
earth. 

It will be your duty, with no precedent to guide, 
to create legislation which will control the life and 
constitute the government of millions of men of alien 
race and which will control the destiny of the islands 
of the Southern Seas. You will be the potent factor 
in the final arbitration of the living questions of the 
East, involving the peace of the world. 

" We front the sun and on the purple ridges 
The Virsjin Future lifts her veil of snow." 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 223 

Along the shores of the Pacific will boil with fervid 
heat the great caldron of the world's selfishness and 
greed. Here will meet Anglo-Saxon and Slav, armed 
cap-a-pie for the final contest for the control of the 
civilization of the world. On this colossal field must 
be settled the momentous problems involving the open 
door of commerce to millions of men, the levying of 
indemnities, the delimitations of spheres of influence, 
the dismemberment of empires, and the practical con- 
quest and control of nations. Wondrous will be the 
field of endeavor for the American citizen, and surely 
his spirit should be filled with the highest ideals of 
free government. It will be for your strong hands to 
open wide the closed door of commerce to millions 
of people that through its lintels may flow the sun- 
light of Western life and thought, fructifying those 
strange lands with our conception of a higher and 
more glorious governmental and individual existence. 
Alone of the nations desiring no territorial aggrandize- 
ment, it will be for you to resist oppression by example 
and influence, to demand equal and exact justice to 
Caucasian, Malay, and Mongolian, and to place among 
far-off peoples a monument whose foundations are 
based upon the high ideals and broad intelligence of 
American citizenship. 

Holding, as I do, that it is against the policy of our 
country to further extend politically our boundaries, 
yet the hour is upon us when we will control the trade, 
and through that channel dominate the life and gov- 



224 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

ernmental policy of every republic on the Western 
Hemisphere. To still the warring elements and to 
mould the disturbed commonwealths into models of 
good government, will surely need the wisest exer- 
cise of the genius of our citizenship. With this era 
upon us, with an opportunity and desire to consum- 
mate these exalted ideals of our civilization, in com- 
parison how insignificant and inglorious have been 
the aims of other nations in their dealings with the 
peoples of the world — Egypt for war, Venice for trade, 
Rome for power, and France for military glory. 

As we contemplate this epoch, this grasping of the 
lintels of the globe in the hands of the American 
civilization, it seems that the vision goes beyond the 
ken of mortal man. Not since the Great Navigator 
turned his eyes westward upon our land has there 
occurred an era with greater power to affect mankind. 
Here is the broadest civilization of the most powerful 
and virile people on earth, impelled by forces beyond 
our comprehension, pouring its life upon the teeming 
millions of the East. In this solemn hour, when you 
are booted and spurred and ready to face this crisis in 
your country's life and this epoch in the world's his- 
tory, I implore you to cherish in your inmost heart 
the true ideals of the Republic. Here, on this hal- 
lowed soil, where the mountains first grew radiant 
with the flame of our country's shrine, I call to your 
mind the traditions of our land. I pray that as your 
eyes look upon the nations you may not alone see 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 225 

the gold and silver and the trappings of material 
power, and that the hands lifted for truth and light 
may not be heeded for the flash of the encircling 
jewel. Holding close to your hearts the traditions of 
freedom, of right and justice, of the rule of the people 
under the same law for rich and poor, empires will 
be shaken, despotism will be dethroned, and justice 
will be meted out with even hands to the nations of 
the East, As you stand here with your faces 
brightened by the radiance of the lands near the rising 
sun, I would swear you to cling to these principles by 
an oath more solemn than any ever breathed by gray- 
clad pilgrim, staff" in hand, impatient to walk in the 
life scenes of the Blessed Master. It was for him alone 
to bow at a broken tomb and touch with reverent lips 
a dismantled shrine where the breath of years had 
winnowed away all save the spirit of other times. With 
you it is to deal with life and the living, with those 
who reap and sow; and if you are true to our country's 
ideals, this era will work out for the world a civiliza- 
tion "beyond which God's divinest secrets lie." 

Is there needed more than my rude limnings of the 
bare outlines of your transcendent duties in this era to 
nerve you to the grasping of that high intelligence 
which will enable you and your country to successfully 
accomplish the work which in God's own good time 
has been made so ready for your hands in other lands 
and other climes ? 

When we view our own land, the changes wrought 

IS 



226 Some SovitKern Q\iestions 

by the era of commerce in our material life are even 
more far-reaching and important in their enduring ef- 
fect upon our civic life. The colossal combinations, 
revolutionizing the conditions of our commercial being 
and absolutely starting the very foundations of our 
country's life ; the growth of enormous fortunes de- 
nied to kings, enabling their corporate or individual 
possessors to touch at will every concern in the life of 
the people ; the unparalleled growth of dependence upon 
material power necessarily resulting therefrom, whilst 
strengthening the hands of this republic in its majestic 
march to the material supremacy of the world, yet have 
brought the people of our country face to face with the 
most important era, excepting one, which has touched 
life within the last half century of its existence. 

And here I will be pardoned for the assertion of 
another truism of political history. It is this — that 
whilst in the lifetime of every historic people there may 
appear important eras or cycles, they are often adven- 
titious, that is, they appear in one people and may not 
appear in another ; yet, sure as the return of the flowers 
of springtime, in the history of every historic people 
there has appeared the era of commercialism and 
material power, and its ultimate effect has been hurtful 
to the country's real inner life. I do not here discuss 
whether this is cause or effect. I found my fears on 
the inexorable law of nations. When a nation has 
arrived at a great height of material splendor and 
power, its commercial era, it has first paused, then 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 227 

halted, and ere long has fallen aside and listened to 
the feet of newer peoples beating on the path the music 
of the oft-recurring cycle. A general deduction from 
the examples of history may be unscientific, for every 
conclusion must have its logical premises ; yet on the 
unwinding of the scroll of human affairs, this com- 
mercial epoch has always left the nation showing the 
decay of those splendid moral and mental virtues 
which made it historic. 

I will be pardoned here for a digression in order 
that I may be clearly understood. We would not ar- 
rest the march of the material glory of this era. This 
people has never faltered when meeting a crisis in its 
affairs. No hand should curb the legitimate power of 
the day. He who would seek by legislation or political 
effect to impair the rightful progress of material power 
is an enemy of the Republic. We of the South, sur- 
rounded by an empire of material wealth such as 
graces no other portion of the land, would be doubly 
recreant to our country did we not fashion it into life 
and power. Under our bright sun, we would create 
that wealth of material splendor which would hide 
under its glory all of our sorrows and tears, yet we 
would hallow its life and power with that elevation ot 
thought and nobleness of purpose which would be 
more potent to mankind than the proudest monument 
ever erected to material power. 

To resume, I do not believe that the citizens of this 
Republic are losing their love for the principles which 



2 28 Some SoutKern Questions 

have given to us conditions of happiness unsurpassed 
by any country or in any age. These great principles 
of government unmistakably show their living influ- 
ence in the life which is widening and broadening the 
sphere of our commercial and civic existence. With 
me, there is no pessimism as to the future of the 
Republic; but the conditions of the day bear with them 
the inevitable consequence, that as a nation gathers 
great material power it naturally looks to its influence 
for safety rather than to the virtue, patriotism, and 
high character of the citizen, which are the walls of 
defense of a truly historic and epoch-making people. 

A government of the people is the most difficult to 
keep straight and true on its course ; and unless the 
people, the final repository of all the power, hold firmly 
to the true underlying principles of citizenship the real 
glory of a country must surely decay. This govern- 
ment was not founded on the paramount idea of trade 
and commerce ; yet the wisdom of the Fathers recog- 
nized that these questions were most important to the 
new government. They thundered against the King 
their anathema ' ' for cutting ofi" trade with all parts of 
the world." Whilst the contest for liberty in England 
universally arose over the question of taxation, it was, 
however, a minor portion of the structural scheme of 
our governmental policy, and was adverted to because 
the acts complained of constituted an interference with 
the liberties and personal rights of our people, which 
they were determined to fully and completely establish. 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day ^-zg 

As Mr. Burke says, trade has been the mere pulse of 
liberty. 

Our government was built on the higher, nobler, and 
more lasting foundation of the freedom and the rights 
and the supreme power within the law of the citizen, 
and the chief thought of the Fathers was directed to 
the best method of perpetuating those rights. " That 
no free government or the blessings of liberty can be 
preserved to any people but by the firm adherence to 
justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, 
and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental prin- 
ciples," was the culminating clause as to these majestic 
principles voiced by the Bill of Rights of Virginia. 
Every declaration underlying our policy of govern- 
ment was redolent of the citizen. He was the supreme 
question of consideration. 

With the lessons of years before us, does not every 
American citizen join us in thunderous acclaim that 
only upon the broad basis of the preponderating influ- 
ence of the citizen can free government work out its 
supreme destiny ? I do not apologize for a reiteration 
of these principles underlying our country's life. I am 
taught that only by a recurrence to the historic prin- 
ciples of the country can the texture of its life be pre- 
served. Amidst the material glory of this era it is 
easy to forget them. Surrounded by all of the evi- 
dences of this material era, the natural tendency is to 
regard that material glory as the true end of govern- 
ment. To conserve it against every other interest, 



2^o Some SovitHem Questions 

and to subordinate the ideals of the Republic to its 
interests, is the sure result of the continued con- 
templation of this side of our civilization. Its splen- 
dors become typical of the essence of our life. This 
result is natural and in consonance with human 
nature. With the touch of this material era, palaces 
rise to the skies, cities are crowded by life and action, 
and the uncounted evidences of material splendor 
lend their glamour to the spirit of the times. 

The material interests thus dominate and control 
the whole scope of the people's life and government. 
Hence, ere we realize it, that spirit of republican 
equity, founded on the citizen and his supreme posi- 
tion in the State, is impaired. This is one of the 
dangers to our people, resulting from the action of this 
era of commercialism. The fear that the great co- 
ordinations of capital, springing armed and equipped 
from the womb of this era, may impair some of our 
institutional rights will, I believe, never be realized. 
These organizations, uncontrolled by wise restrictive 
law, are hurtful and they may work an injury to our 
country's life; but I believe that never will they be- 
come dangerous to the underlying principles of our 
government. Their overt attempts to seize unauthor- 
ized power can be easily observed, and the citizen 
of the Republic, alive to that danger, will sternly re- 
press any such inclinations. The danger is in other 
directions. 

The controlling characteristic of the American citizen 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 231 

has been his spirit of initiative. He has been his own 
master, asking no assistance, expecting no co-operation 
beyond that conceded to every man under the laws of 
the land. He has been supreme in his control of those 
enterprises to which he has placed his hand. He has 
leaned on no man, and the success of his endeavor has 
added measure to the majestic height of his indepen- 
dent citizenship. Under the commercial system of the 
day, the vast majority of our citizens must depend 
upon enterprises originated and controlled by others. 
This will surely impair the self-reliance and sturdy 
independence of our citizenship. 

There is another and more insidious tendency to- 
wards danger. The ease of the organization of enor- 
mous combinations of capital for the control of the 
great enterprises of the day, and the greater eflfective- 
ness of the corporation over the individual organiza- 
tion, have the invariable tendency to place the citizen 
in the background, and to minimize and destroy his 
supreme influence in our policy of government. This 
tendency is dangerous because it is insidious and 
gradual. The wisdom, the energy, the supreme power 
of the citizen has been the propelling influence of the 
creation of this marvellous material era, and the fear 
of those who thoughtfully study their country's prob- 
lems is that the individual citizen, the creator of these 
material glories, will be dominated by the enormous 
forces so created. Here is the danger of a revolution 
in the status of the citizen, more important in its effect 



232 Some SovitKern Questions 

than any which has ever been undergone by our 
people. Behind this material power should be the 
individual citizen, and if we carry to completion the 
tremendous work placed in our hands, his power and 
influence must not be foreshortened by one hands- 
breadth. His spirit and energy and individuality 
must vitalize and dominate these mighty forces. The 
citizen is the supreme unit in our material existence. 
If we pass out of this era with our country's power 
broadened and our national character unimpaired, it 
will be alone due to the citizen. Material power was 
never interested in the broadening of the rights of the 
people. In the evolution of Anglo-Saxon liberty, the 
citizen has been the supreme spirit against vested 
interest, right or privilege, class and material power. 
He looks through the mist of the half-history at 
Runnymede. He was at Naseby, Dunbar, and Mars- 
ton Moor. He was at Lexington, Bunker Hill, Cow- 
pens, and Jamestown. From his brow sprung Magna 
Charta, Remonstrance, and Declaration. With the 
gaping doors of the Tower wide open, he lighted Eng- 
land with the flame of fire, "that the liberties, fran- 
chises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are 
the ancient and undoubted birthrights and inheritance 
of the subjects of England." 

When we contemplate his real grandeur, his ab- 
solute importance in our system of existence, the days 
of the tyranny of the Stuarts arise before us. The 
old chamber so redolent of the struggle for England's 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 233 

liberty is filled to-day with anxious faces. At the bar 
stand the framers of the illegal tax, refusing to answer 
at the Commons, alleging that their acts were at the 
command of the King. Protests had been unheeded 
and were tmavailing, and no wrongs had been re- 
dressed. Bre patriot hands had locked the doors, on 
their oaken panels thundered the ushers of the King, 
demanding admittance to summon the House to the 
Lords for final adjournment. We see Pym with his lips 
hot with patriot speech : ' ' Our Petition is for the laws 
of England, and this power seems to be another power 
distinguished from the power of the law." There sat 
Coke blaming himself for his timid counsels, which 
had prevented Eliot's purpose to propose the Remon- 
strance. Here was John Hampden: " I could be con- 
tent to lend," said he, "but fear to draw on myself 
the curse of Magna Charta, which should be read 
twice a year against those who infringe it." And 
over there was Wentworth, with the shadow of his 
apostasy not yet upon him, declaring, "We must 
vindicate our liberties ; we must reinforce the laws 
of our ancestors ; we must set such a stamp upon 
them as no licentious spirit shall hereafter dare 
to invade them." And then high above the thun- 
ders of the King's servants at the doors, above the 
protest of apostate speaker held in his chair by lib- 
erty-loving hands, reaching down to us through the 
broken corridors of time, come the defiant words 
of Sir John Eliot, "None have gone about to break 



234 Some Southern Qxiestions 

Parliaments, but in the end Parliaments have bro- 
ken them." 

When we read pages like these from the history 
of our civilization, it makes our hearts bum with 
pride at the one great central figure of liberty's pro- 
gress, the citizen. From scenes like these arises our 
country's glory; and am I not to be excused for hold- 
ing out to its young thought the ineffable importance 
of preserving in all of his power the citizen, the es- 
sence, the life and inspiration of our national hope ? 
The law of material power has never changed in the 
history of the world, and when we summon from the 
tomb the spectres of nations dead and gone, all will 
bear for us solemn warning that the true grandeur 
and permanence of a government cannot be founded 
alone on material power. 

The material glory of the nations was playing its part 
before the now overthrown columns of hoary Karnak 
lifted their lotus-crowned heads over the plains of the 
Nile. It was holding high carousal on the banks of 
the Euphrates and the Tigris before the deep founda- 
tion stones of Babylon and Nineveh and Rome had 
found their resting-place. Yea, even before the lions 
of Mycenae began their ceaseless watch of the gates, 
it held glorious carnivals amidst the peoples of old. It 
is an old, old story. Amidst its exultation arose the 
sweet perfume of the spices of Sheba's queen, and 
through its halo there spread to the uttermost parts 
of the earth the glory of the riches and the wisdom of 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 235 

King Solomon ; yet over tlie Towers of David, blessed 
with the smile of the Redeemer of Mankind, there 
gleam to-day the Crescent and the Cimeter, the in- 
signia of another people, and typical of governmental 
vice and incapacity. The tramp of its serried legions 
echoed through the Cilician Gates and beneath the 
deep shades of the German forests and over the far 
cities of the East ; yet, amidst the fast-enveloping sands 
of a desolation unspeakable, a ruined gateway sur- 
mounted by the imperial eagle still defiantly holding 
in its broken talons the shattered inscription, " Here 
the God Terminus rested towards the South," is typi- 
cal of imperial Rome. This material glory seemed 
founded on eternal foundations, buttressed by Church 
and State, when Kings and Pope met and delimited 
to Portugal and Spain the New World, giving to one 
the Brazils and to the other the North ; yet within the 
two revolving suns your young eyes have seen the 
passing of the sail which carried away the shrunken 
glory of once imperial Spain to be forever locked 
within the mountains of the Iberian Peninsula. Under 
its mighty influence pylon and tower and obelisk, 
walled city and fertile field, attested to the glory of 
the Babylonish kingdoms ; yet the I/Drd did not more 
certainly breathe His eternal silence upon the mailed 
legions of the tented hosts of the Assyrian, than have 
His hands wrought the desolation of desolations upon 
their fertile lands, blooming gardens, and towering 
cities. 



236 Some SoxitKem Questions 

The glint of their velvets and the sheen of their 
silks robbed the sky of its sapphire, its orange, and its 
blue; yet now, amidst the sand-encumbered columns 
of Tyre and Sidon, the lonely fisherman mends his 
broken nets. When we contemplate the immortality 
of this Republic, there arise before us the stately 
Parthenon and the blue ^gean hallowed by the glory 
and letters and patriotism of Athens; and winging 
over degenerate Greece come the vaulting words 
of Pericles: "The grandeur of this our Athens caus- 
eth the produce of the whole earth to be imported 
here." 

The preservation in this era of the dignity and in- 
fluence of the citizen, the jealous perpetuation of his 
aspirations, the real end of our government, can alone 
write on the scroll of the world's history a new page 
changing all historic experience and illuminating its 
sad and unvarying record with the glory and bright- 
ness and final triumph of our country's civilization. 
With the garnered wealth of our land held firmly in 
our strong hands, guarded and controlled by the un- 
impaired spirit of our citizenship — instead of this 
material era, leaving us with an emasculated country 
with the true aims of government perverted — before 
our majestic progress mankind will, like Elijah at 
Horeb, wrap its face in its mantle before the glory 
of the works of God. 

The exaltation of our civilization cannot be wrought 
to its final accomplishment, unless accompanied in the 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 237 

life of the citizen by a virtue exalted beyond tempta- 
tion and by a love of country dimmed by no desire 
of acquisition. By virtue, I mean virtue in its highest 
and most exalted sense, civic virtue. Build your em- 
pire of commerce on the sea ; grasp in your hands all 
the peoples of the earth ; let your civilization and trade 
and power be stretched from Southern Cross to Arc- 
turus; enshrine the glories gathered on sea and land 
in temples stately beyond the knowing of man ; unless 
aU is builded on these highest human ideals, as sure as 
man is bom of woman, you have founded an empire 
of unrest. Lighting the earth by the wonders of science 
and touching the peoples with our triumphs of com- 
merce will be small when weighed with the potency 
of our example for good or for evil on the nations of 
the earth. With no sense of national exultation, but 
appreciating its responsibility, I assert that the char- 
acter of the American citizen will determine the charac- 
ter of this age. Your eyes will behold three hundred 
millions of people dwelling in this land, one-half of 
civilized mankind, and the grandeur of their influence 
will partake of the majesty of our country. We are 
charged with the happiness of mankind. Is not this 
responsibility above every question of personal con- 
sideration ? Does it not reach to a higher element in our 
life than the mere question of personal gain ? " What 
is the individual man with all the good or evil that 
may betide him in comparison with the good or evil 
which may befall a great country in a crisis like this, 



238 Some SoxitKern Qviestions 

and in the midst of great transactions which concern 
that country's fate?" 

When in time was the virtue of citizenship so im- 
portant to a country as it is to us in this era ? When 
in the broad world did justice need sword so bright or 
lance so strong ? When did the world call so loudly 
for a country exalted by the spirit of justice and filled 
with the supreme desire to maintain its principles? 
When nations, whose sceptered masters, are crowned 
by the servants of Him who gave to mankind the law 
of equity between peoples and men, measure justice 
alone by rule of diplomat and strength of serried bat- 
talions should not virtue have a champion with no 
thought but of justice ? When the great nations, hoary 
with civilization, divide an empire under the pretence 
of commercial concessions, delimitate spheres of in- 
fluence which violate the fundamental principles of 
human decency, and assume jurisdictions subversive 
of the laws of nations, surely justice is beating with 
impatient hands upon the temple door. When ships, 
swinging under the banners of civilization, are laden 
with looted treasure of temple and palace, it needs 
only change of time and place to bring before us the 
ox-wagons of Attila and Alaric, piled high with the 
household goods of Gaul and Rome. Verily, 

" The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That they do take who have the power, 
And they do keep who can." 

Before scenes like these civilization bows her head 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 239 

and with lifted hands prays for a force among the 
peoples of the world holding that justice and virtue 
between men and nations are builded on the same 
eternal foundations. Under the earth-hunger of to-day- 
justice among the nations can only relume her torch 
from the shrine of virtue glowing in the heart of the 
great Republic of the West. 

I implore that like the Vestal Virgins you will, with 
unceasing watchfulness, keep the flame pure and strong. 
Before the temptations of this colossal age the black 
page of civic infamy grows insignificant. The com- 
mercial combinations of the era, controlling every pro- 
duct of our country and overstepping all of the barriers 
of existing law, sternly demand that legislative control 
which will forever fix their correct position in our 
country's life. We must surround these creations of 
the era with that wise legislation and with those re- 
strictions which a free people has learned through sad 
experience must always control the exercise of naked 
power. Dominated by the citizen, holding no power 
above laws and constitutions, they must take their 
place in our civic life and play their legitimate part 
in the affairs of this splendid era. This result can 
never be accomplished without a struggle unexampled 
in historic experience. Since man began to earn his 
bread by the sweat of his brow, power never loosened 
its heavy hand without a struggle, fierce and relent- 
less though it may be. Did ever power plead for such 
a stake ? Did ever greed hover over such fertile fields ? 



240 Some SovitKern Qxiestions 

A judgment of court means wealth greater than the 
income of kings; a line of legislation is an imperial 
tribute; and the success of an election is the control 
of the world. When Bacon, the wisest of mankind, 
threw himself at the feet of the Commons and, with 
passionate cry, exclaimed, " I do plainly and ingen- 
uously confess that I am guilty of corruption and do 
renoimce all defence," his whole briberies on the bench 
of the highest court of the world did not amoimt to 
a day's income of a modem king of commerce. When 
Buckingham wasted the treasure of England, leaving 
to us John Eliot's invective, that precious heritage of 
freedom, "This only is conceived by us, knights, citi- 
zens, and burgesses of the Common House of Parlia- 
ment, that by him came all our evils, in him we find 
the causes, and on him must be the remedies. Pereat 
qui perdere cunda festinat. Opprimatur ne omnes op- 
primat,^^ his whole profligate expenditure of the wealth 
of a great kingdom would not sufl&ce for the yearly 
needs of an industrial corporation of this era. When 
Edmund Burke, ** In the name of the people of India, 
whose rights he has trodden under foot and whose 
country he has turned into a desert, ' ' arraigned Warren 
Hastings, all the peculation charged against the founder 
of English Asiatic Empire, wrung from lordly India 
through years of uncontrolled power, would not tell 
the tale of the golden stream falling for one season 
into the vaults of an American temple of exchange. 
Is it not, however, wasting of precious time for me 



Some Xendencies of tKe Day 241 

to consider that you will put aside the benediction 
of the republican honor and virtue coming to you as 
a priceless heritage of the past ? The blood coursing 
through your veins, throbbing from the lives of two 
hundred years of honest men and women, will not 
allow you to be paid participants in unjust legislation 
or to utter the judgments of corrupted court. " Only 
continue to be what you are. I^et your government 
commence in your breast ; and lay the foundation of it 
in the command of your passions. If you make virtue 
the rule of your conduct, and the end of your actions, 
everything will proceed in harmony and order. I have 
explained to you the spirit of those laws and con- 
stitutions that were established by your predecessors ; 
and you have nothing to do but to carry them into 
execution. If this should be the case, I shall have 
the glory of having formed an emperor to virtue; but 
if otherwise, let this letter remain a testimony with 
succeeding ages, that you did not ruin the Roman 
Empire under pretence of the counsels or the authority 
of Plutarch." 

When Rome heard these words, as applicable to-day 
to our Republic as it was to Rome in the days of 
Trajan, it was too late. The rule of material power 
had usurped the place of patriotism in the breasts of 
the people, and the once mistress of the world had not 
the strength to resist the wave of barbaric invasion. 
It was but the reiteration of the eternal rule as to the 
violation of the underlying principles of the people. 
16 



242 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

Was ever a great and permanent monument erected by 
a historic people but its foundations were built broad 
and deep upon that perception and life which recog- 
nized that virtue and patriotism were the most exalted 
attributes of the citizen ? Only founded upon these 
attributes, I repeat, can a people become permanent 
and hold its place against the changes wrought by 
time. To sell the cheapest wares, to sail the swiftest 
ships, to load the world with the best bargains, to erect 
the most magnificent mills and manufactories, are the 
smallest part of the work which a great and free people 
are destined to accomplish. These ideals have only 
left toppling ruins in the history of the peoples of the 
world. They have never accomplished great and abid- 
ing results. Within themselves and strengthened by 
all of the tremendous forces at their command, these 
ideals cannot impress our civilization upon the world. 
To successfully accomplish this and impress the no- 
blest ideals and the highest aspirations upon the world, 
our country must fill its wealth of enterprise with the 
exalted patriotism of a free people. To arouse our 
country to these highest elements of citizenship is our 
supreme duty. To fill it with the noblest resolve 
should be our first thought. This is supreme to any 
question of material power and its selfish advantages. 
This spirit will fill our ships with more favorable 
breezes and strengthen our hands among the nations 
of the earth. It will do far more ; it will place our 
country upon foundations high above the danger of 



Some Tendencies of tHe Day 243 

governmental and commercial change. You cannot 
subordinate patriotism to acquisition, nor make the 
spirit of the day the chief object of our civil exist- 
ence. This era must and surely will run its course, 
but our country must live for its high destiny. Ex- 
alted and strengthened with holy love of country, all 
of the questions of our governmental and civil life will 
be settled in their allotted time. Flushed with our 
success, confident in our strength, we only discern 
questions of unrest in the far distance. With the fill- 
ing of our vacant lands, the changing of the relations 
of the citizens each to the other, the increase of cost of 
living, the settling of the conditions of class steadily 
approximating those conditions in the older countries 
of the world, the hardening of the struggle for exist- 
ence among our people will surely bring questions to 
disturb and to annoy. With these potential dangers 
before us, I pray for that wealth of patriotism under- 
flowing our material life which will create that mighty 
moral power that will enable our country to pass suc- 
cessfully this great cycle of change. 

Edmund Burke says that it is the highest duty of a 
citizen to make the most of the materials of his country. 
Were ever such materials laid in the palm of his hand 
to mould as he may desire? A noble, free people, 
crowned with a civilization unexampled, peopling a 
majestic continent crowded with every element of 
human happiness — will you not be recreant to your 
traditions if, with these transcendent materials, you do 



244 Some SoxitHern Qviestions 

not make the world holier and better, and advance 
your country beyond the doors of the world's market- 
places ? In the shade of these mountains and touched 
with the glory of this historic valley, what other senti- 
ment could we feel than that exalted spirit which holds 
as small every feeling of material aggrandizement as 
compared with love of country ? 

It seems that the people of the mountains hold 
more jealously to the great primal faiths of our 
country. I know not why, but we of the mountains 
have a simpler faith and feel more deeply the im- 
pairment of these great principles than do the people 
of the plain. From these heights the vision is clearer, 
and it pierces the clouds whose shadows are over the 
rich plains and fertile valleys. In the history of 
freedom and religion, the mountains of the world 
have played a mighty part. They alone have looked 
upon the ineffable majesty of God. In the mountains 
Moses met God, and Nebo's stony sides trembled with 
the thunder of the stern command, " Get thee up into 
this mountain and die." Their silent fastnesses wit- 
nessed the agony of the temptation of our I^ord. To 
the eyes of faith arise Hermon and Tabor and Car- 
mel and Gilead and the hills of Galilee echoing with 
the footsteps of Prophet and Patriarch and King and 
Disciple. When religious and political freedom had 
no abiding-place, the song of the Huguenot swelled 
pure and triumphant amid the mountains of France. 
When the light grew faint in the Mother Country, 



Some Tendencies of tHe Day 245 

over the mountains of Scotland stood the pillar of 
cloud by day and of fire by night. When from the 
plains of Po to the German Ocean the weary feet of 
freedom had no resting-place, it fled to the cliffs of the 
Alps and found there a home. 

When in our own country liberty had almost de- 
spaired of triumph, the Father of his Country turned 
his despairing eyes to these mountains, here to plant 
the banner of freedom and maintain among this liberty- 
loving people the contest for its existence. So to-night 
I would bid you to look above the glories of this 
material age and ascend the mountains on whose lofty 
sides dwells patriotism, whose life is infinitely more 
superior in importance to mankind than all of the 
teeming plenty in the plains beneath. 

From these supreme heights sprung the men of 
Virginia whose lives are the loftiest contemplation for 
those who, during this momentous period, will control 
the destiny of our country. Surrounded by the majesty 
of nature, its influence broadened their every thought 
and elevated every principle of action . With the grand- 
eur of mountain and tenderness of outline and color 
always before them, love of country was pre-eminent 
to all thought of self. Cart sunt parentes, cari liberie 
cari familiares, propinqid ; sed omnes omnium caritates 
una patria complexa est — " Sweet are parents, sweet are 
children, sweet are friends and relations ; but all affec- 
tions of all men are embraced in country alone" was 
not merely the swelling period of the philosopher and 



246 Some SovitKern Questions 

orator, but was to them the eternal truth whose verity 
they were full ready to prove by giving up all save 
country. From these exalted scenes rose the men, the 
like of whom the world has yet to see. 

Partaking from their surroundings of that noble- 
ness of spirit which loved truth because it was true 
and cared naught for wealth when weighed in the 
balance with love of country, ease and luxury and 
power were thrown aside without a sigh when country 
called them to its sacred sacrifice. This greatness of 
spirit, this contemplation of lofty ideals for them- 
selves and country never lessened that effectiveness 
which in the world of thought, in the wide domain 
of government, and on the active theatre of life, 
wrought for mankind those mighty works whose life 
will march with time. 

When the ancients wished to begin any impor- 
tant work, through the smoke of shrines lighted by 
anxious hands they summoned the gods from broad 
Olympus and wooded Ida. Here in the shadows of 
these mountains, mute but eternal witnesses of Vir- 
ginia's toil and sacrifices, I would summon around 
you from the battle-field and council-chamber her 
mighty spirits whose holy influence may cause you to 
pluck from your hearts any love greater than that 
of country, to exalt with holy pride of patriotism 
your every aspiration and desire, and to so cherish 
your country's honor that from her stately portals 
she may walk among the nations with uplifted coun- 



Some Tendencies of tKe Day 247 

tenance and hands unsullied. Here, in old Virginia's 
land, I would surround you with spirits more glorious 
than any worshipped in marble fane on Thessalian 
mountain-top. Here would I assemble your fathers, 
proud spirits of freedom, and, uplifted by their unseen 
presence, pray that the civilization erected by them 
should never be sullied by wrong. Where, in what 
land, can you touch such holy inspiration for love of 
country, and if, holding for naught their sacrifices and 
tears, with impious hands you should touch this 
temple of the world's hopes, where so deep a curse? 
With every swelling mountain a temple of memories, 
holy and sweet, and every valley a tented field where 
wait in rest the spectred hosts of Virginia's glorious 
dead, touched with the grace of such example, you 
can do naught of dishonor to your country's life. 
Proud Virginia, matchless mother of stately sons, 
self-immolated on freedom's altar, with thy bosom 
seamed and torn, yet with thy soul white and pure, 
thy sons greet thee, and touching hands around thy 
altar, they swear fealty to truth and honor. And 
oh, my country, above thy stately palaces, higher 
than the splendors of thy labor bom from thy heart 
of endeavor, may thou erect a temple, enduring and 
glorious, which will be crowned with a citizenship 
matchless in its intelligence, unapproachable in its 
virtue, whose light shall touch with gladness and 
hope all the nations which on this earth do dwell ! 



VI 

PATRIOTISM OF THE SOUTH ' 

Mr. President^ Ladies, and Gentlemen : 

WHEN your honored invitation came it carried 
me in my thoughts to Virginia, to the 
Great Valley where I first saw the light. 
With the glamour of youth's enchantment lingering 
yet a little, I saw old Virginia's hills with the sunshine 
glorifying farm and village, mirroring itself in the 
bright waters, and clothing mountain and valley with 
wealth of green and gold. A vision came to me of the 
old Commonwealth as I remember it in my childhood. 
Again I saw her worn from battle-field and adversity, 
again I witnessed her sorrows, her sacrifices, her courage, 
her high honor, her glory, everything save dishonor. 

This fair valley still reverberated with the thunder- 
ous tread of the angel of the spear and the sword. 
Never since Alaric harried Italy and Gaul, never since 
Alva ravaged the Low Countries has the hand of fate 
held for a people such hard conditions. 

I wish to awaken no sad memories, for your faces 
are turned to the glory of the rising morning, not to 
the rays of the setting sun. Yet, in the pages of what 

*An address delivered June 17, 1908, before the Literary 
Societies of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va. 

248 



Patriotism of the SovitK 249 

book, from the broad field of what experience, can I 
better gather for you lessons of high resolve than from 
the heroic endeavor and exalted ideals with which our 
fathers and mothers crowned with unexampled grace 
this land of the South ? 

Here in this old State, my native land, under the 
portal of this hoary University, listening to the heart- 
throbs of those whose blood flows with mine, feeling 
the touch of unseen hands, and hearing the music of a 
voice tuned to the choir of the Blessed, I am surrounded 
by the tender memories of the days that are gone. An 
angel winged its way to our earth to find here the 
sweetest and best to take back to the radiance of 
Heaven. There was wafted on the sunshine the per- 
fume of the rose and it was garnered as worthy to enter 
the holy streets. Anon, under the shadows of the 
gathering evening, the smile of a babe as it slept in its 
cradle was clasped to the bosom of the messenger, and 
then, beneath the drooping eaves of an humble cottage, 
there was found a mother's love. When at the Pearly 
Gates the bosom of the angel was loosed of its burden, 
the perfume of the rose had wasted, the smile of the 
babe had waned, and the mother's love alone was left 
to pass the lintel of Heaven. 

God bless my mother's love. Everything that I am 
is her honor and here at her old home, glorified with 
her love and ennobled by her sacrifices, I wish in this 
splendid presence to make to her memory my loving 
obeisance. God bless our mothers of our South, from 



250 Some SovitHern Questions 

whose spotless souls came our earliest aspirations for 
good, who, when the cruse of oil was failing and the 
meal in the barrel was wasting, looked with eyes of 
hope beyond that of men, to that better land where the 
dews are distilled into plenty and where the prayers of 
faith are always answered ! 

God bless the mothers of the South ! When our fair 
land was wasted and war had ploughed deep and broad 
the furrow which divided the aflfections of our country, 
it was the mother who, walking firmly and securely 
with Him who said, " And unto him that smiteth 
thee on the one cheek, offer also the other," taught 
the sections those exalted humanities which bound 
again in love and confidence the peoples of this great 
nation. 

With splendid resolve the men and women of the 
South turned their lives to the broken home and the 
desolate field, to the rebuilding of our prostrate civiUza- 
tion, and the song of the wheels is not their requiem 
but a paean of victory. 

These fields of plenty about us, this glory of com- 
pleted endeavor, this marvellous re-creation and perpetu- 
ation of the life of the South attest to us the exalted 
patriotism of our fathers, which is of infinite importance 
to the country in the changes of the day. It is this 
patriotism of the South, and its influences upon the 
present, which in my homely manner I wish to present 
in this discourse. 

From the very texture of its civilization, the origin 



Patriotism of the SoxitK 251 

and habits of its people, and their political and social 
as well as local environment, the South has been be- 
yond other people with whom I am acquainted con- 
trolled by ideals. The controlling ideal of the South 
has been patriotism, the patriotism of State and locality, 

I do not apologize for the theme. It is old fashioned, 
but amidst the complication of the affairs of modem 
life, and considering the change of the texture of 
thought as to governmental direction, is it not best for 
us to recur to those fundamental ideals which controlled 
in the formation of our country's government ? 

Under the conditions of the day the patriotism of the 
South along its conservative lines as to governmental 
direction should have the amplest and fullest play. As 
the country grows in power it grows naturally along 
the lines of organization and concentration. That or- 
ganization is directed largely to results. Those results, 
under the general ideals of the day, are peculiarly 
economic. The consequence is that the man becomes 
a mere unit in the sum-total of production. He looks 
at the marvellous results, and, in a way, is proud of his 
country, yet he is endangered of becoming lessened in 
his dignity, his aspirations, and his patriotism. The 
patriotism which I mean is not that which counts the 
glory of our country solely by the ships on the sea, the 
glowing furnaces, and the fertile acres, but the patriot- 
ism which cherishes and loves this wonderful combina- 
tion of State and Union, and ennobles and glorifies the 
aspirations of the citizen. 



252 Some SovitKem Questions 

As in economic life, such is the trend of the govern- 
mental conditions of the day. This great Union has 
dazzled the world by its accomplishment. It has waged 
successful wars on land and sea. It has covered the 
sea with ships and commerce. It has accomplished 
wonders of diplomacy among the peoples of the earth. 
By its laws it has dimmed the stars with the smoke of 
its manufactories. It is binding together the oceans 
and mingling the waters of the lakes. It has built 
harbors and deepened rivers. It has constructed a 
great system of judiciary. Through its Congress it 
has thrown the robe of its power over the whole people, 
and has touched with its strong hands every work and 
aspiration and sentiment. It has accomplished marvels, 
but, in that accomplishment, there is with many, espec- 
ially of the South, an abiding fear that this has been 
wrought to the lessening of the influence and powers of 
the State under the Constitution. The most precious 
thing which we who are older can give to the j^oung 
is experience. This experience teaches me the trend 
of the day and that it should be the supreme object 
of patriotism to guide the government into the old 
channels provided by the Fathers. 

Thoughtful men believe that in the South abides 
that ideal of local patriotism which can accomplish this 
mighty work, and preserve unimpaired this marvellous 
combination of State and Union. 

Can this Southern patriotism be successfully appealed 
to under the conditions of the present ? Is it alive and 



Patriotism of tHe So\jth 253 

virile ? Are the basic ideas of the South yet sufi&ciently 
strong to influence the direction of the whole people ? 
Is the material power of the South of sufiicient potency 
to dignify its demand for the return to these basic prin- 
ciples? To answer these questions we must under- 
stand the history and underlying principles of our 
Southern people. 

It is interesting to obser\'^e that the vital characteristic 
of Southern patriotism had its written origin in a charter 
granted by a Stuart. The General Assembly which 
met for the first time in America had well defined 
rights as to local liberty. It is true its acts must be 
aflSrmed by the General Court, but in the Charter there 
was the great, vital, salient germ of constitutional gov- 
ernment that no Orders of Court could be enforced 
without the approval and a£&rmance of the General 
Assembly. These principles of this Charter did not 
spring from the ground. Its great principle of local, 
representative government was not bom fully developed 
from the head of the goddess. It was not evolved from 
the limpid waves, the smiling sun, the giant trees, and 
the fertile soil of Virginia. The old chroniclers say 
that the Charter was granted upon the insistent de- 
mands of the Virginians. The Virginians consisted at 
that time of not more than two thousand people, but 
even in this handful, in a new country and beside the 
waters of strange seas, the spirit of local liberty 
was rife, and they had brought with them the desire 
that the rights for which they were contending 



254 Some SoxitHern Questions 

in old England should be granted them in this 
country. 

The times were propitious for the growth of civil 
liberty, and surely patriotism should twine itself about 
the fair lands into which these strangers had come. 
The forcing of the written Charter of 1621 for local 
liberty by Sir Edwin Sandys and his compatriots, in 
England, confirming by general grant the Assembly's 
acts of 1619, was but the evidence in Virginia of the 
great contest in their native England. England was 
changing. Henry and Elizabeth, with the glamour 
which power and personal beauty and strength of 
character always engender in the people, were asleep 
in Westminster Abbey. A tyrannical bigot not re- 
spected for strength or character and hated for his 
course against the liberty of the people was in their 
place. The England which confronted Elizabeth in 
the days of her power was even more insistent upon its 
rights. The supremacy of Parliament, freedom of con- 
science, liberty of the judges, exclusive right of taxa- 
tion and absolute control of the revenues by Parliament, 
and representation by the people, were the watchwords 
of the England which witnessed the dawning of gov- 
ernmental life in America. 

" That the liberties, franchises, privileges, and juris- 
dictions of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted 
birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England ; 
and that the arduous and lu-gent affairs concerning 
the King, State, and defence of the Realm, and of the 



Patriotism of tKe SovitK 255 

Church of England, and the making and maintenance 
of laws, and redress of grievances, which daily happen 
within this Realm, are proper subjects and matter of 
Council and debate in Parliament. And that in the 
handling and proceeding of those businesses every 
member of the House hath, and of right ought to have, 
freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring 
to conclusion the same," was the demand of the 
Commons. 

Silhouetted upon the canvas were the dread figures 
of Pym, and Elliott, and Hampden, and England was 
listening even then for the heavy step of Oliver 
Cromwell. 

It was England of the Remonstrance, of the Petition 
of Right, of the Revolution, of the Supremacy of Par- 
liament ; and Scotland of the Covenant, and France of 
the Reformation, which furnished the swaddling clothes 
for our constitutional liberty. 

Patriotism does not mean the mere love of the con- 
crete portion, the mountains, the rivers, and the fertile 
lands, of a country. It means far more than this. It 
means love of country, crowned with pure and free and 
good government, liberty of conscience and religion, 
justice, government by those who bear the govern- 
ment's burdens, and the high ideals reverenced by the 
people. 

Patriotism supposes a country and traditions, and 
the struggle of years for the great principles demanded 
by the life of the people. It was seven hundred years 



2s6 Some So\JtKern Questions 

after the foundation of Rome before patriotism prompted 
the Grachii to revolt. It was a thousand years of Eng- 
lish conflict before love of England forced the people to 
a war with the king, in which conflict the control of 
the government was the wager of battle. It was an 
equal stretch of weary struggle before the white banner 
of Joan of Arc was unfurled in France. So it has been 
heretofore with every historic country which has wit- 
nessed the evolution and completion of the ideals of 
patriotism. 

In our land the struggle for the attainment of these 
high ideals lasted only a short time. Here in five 
generations of men was the accomplishment of the 
ideals of patriotism in this their loftiest meaning. We 
again insist that the patriotism which has crowned this 
marvellous work in our country did not have its birth 
on these shores. It was in the struggling for life at 
Runnymede. It was in the Scotch Revolution. It was 
in the Utopia of Sir John Moore. It was with WyclifF, 
John Ball, Knox, and John Calvin. The patriotism of 
which I speak was being born in the breasts of the 
peoples who formed the South. Consider these peoples. 
They are bone of your bone and blood of your blood. 
The glory of a country is the perpetuation of the great 
characteristics of its citizens. The people from whom 
j'ou sprung have been peculiar in the perpetuation and 
procreation of the principles which made them great. 
Here in the South there has been little admixture of 
foreign blood. In almost every case you are the sons 



Patriotism of the Sovith 257 

of those who were at Valley Forge, King's Mountain, 
Cowpens, and Yorktown. That the characteristics of 
the fathers ring clear in their children is the prayer of 
those who love their country. 

Let us consider for a moment the texture of the life 
and the salient principles of those who largely con- 
trolled and composed Southern life, and, who, in a 
great degree, directed in the formative period. They 
have been cruelly neglected in the written history and 
the spoken word of our common country. 

What was the moving cause of their coming to this 
land ? Excepting the Latins in Louisiana and Florida 
and the early adventurers, migration to this land is 
but an index to governmental crime in Europe against 
local right, religious and personal freedom. With rela- 
tively few exceptions it was the expatriation of people 
who above everything loved freedom of thought and 
conscience, and governmental justice. It was the ex- 
patriation of people worn with ceaseless struggle for 
principle and whose hands were red with blood shed 
for the right to live under the laws of their coun- 
try according to the dictates of their conscience. The 
decks of every ship whose sails were swelled with the 
western breeze were filled with those who looked back 
upon the receding shores of their native land, whose 
hills were crowned with the altars erected for the im- 
molation of the ideals which they loved, and whose 
valleys were filled with their trampled fields and mined 
homes. 



258 Some SoxitKern Questions 

Theretofore in all the history of time there had never 
been an expatriation of a people solely for the high 
ideals of life. Here in the South is the building of a 
people whose fundamental elements are composed, be 
they French, English, or Scotch, of peoples who loved 
these lofty ideals, rather than life or worldly possessions, 
and who always stood ready to give life and posses- 
sions for those ideals. However diverse these may 
have been, whether reverencing, as the loftiest ideal, 
church and state with the Cavalier, or toleration with 
the Scotchman and the Huguenot, or clinging to local 
self-government with the Englishman, yet all were 
patriotic idealists. In every other instance since the 
pages of history were opened, the betterment of the 
material condition has been the sole and underlying 
cause of the movement of a people. 

The great Aryan change was at the command of an 
instinct for more fertile fields and wider lands. The 
Hebrew movement was under the commands of the 
Almighty, guided by the cloud and fiery pillar. The 
Greek migrated into Greater Greece that he might build 
city, and gymnasium, and temple, and cultivate fertile 
fields denied to him by the narrow confines of his own 
land. The Roman went into Africa, Spain, Greece, 
Gaul, and Germany that the Roman colonist might 
hold with his strong hands the lands conquered with 
the sword. The Goth and Visi-Goth immigration was 
for pure lust of conquest. The Mohammedan moved 
under the influence of a religion dictated by the physical 



Patriotism of tHe SovitK 259 

betterment of its adherents, both in this life and in the 
life to come. The invasion by the Norman of England 
was, alone and solely, for power and territory. The 
immigration of the Frenchman and the Englishman 
into Canada and of the English in the East and the 
Antipodes, and the movement of the Spaniard into 
South America and the Islands of the Seas, were for 
gold, jewels, land, and dominion, and nothing more. 

In none of these great movements was there a seeking 
alone for the higher ideals of government or life, nor 
was there in any case holier influence than the desire 
of betterment of material well-being. Entirely different 
were the motives of those creating the South. 

The Cavalier under his plumed bonnet and curled 
locks carried a love of Church and King unquenchable, 
and placed above castle and ancestral manor undying 
loyalty to his ideal of his country governed by the sys- 
tem bequeathed to him from his fathers. Amidst the 
blazing rafters and the falling walls of his house he 
could exclaim with the old Marquis of Winchester, 
' ' That if the King had no more ground in England 
than Basing House, he would adventure it as he did, 
that Basing House was called Loyalty," or answer 
with Sir Henry Washington, when asked to surrender 
Worcester, " That he would await the commands of 
the King." Not until Naseby, Worcester, Marston 
Moor, Newbury, and Dunbar had shown that their 
cause was dead on the field of battle and that the prin- 
ciples they revered were trampled under the feet of 



26o Some SoxitKern Questions 

Cromwell and the Ironsides, did these people give back 
their hands and knees one inch. Only when the strug- 
gle was lost at home, the white sails of their ships 
brought them to the South, where, under the glory of 
our Southern sun and the influence of life under our 
institutions, loyalty to the ideal of England under King 
and Church was reincarnated into the higher and holier 
love of a country which prescribes no religion and ex- 
acts no toll from conscience. 

One more persistent, more earnest, and who exerted 
a greater influence upon Southern life in the actual 
struggle for liberty than the Cavalier, was the Scotch 
Covenanter, the Scotch-Irishman of this day and place. 

Proscribed by law, massacred on heathery moun- 
tain, starved on frozen moor, yet above massacre of 
wife and children, proscription of law, and through 
the smoke of burning home and amidst the desolation 
of field and country, he clung to the religious ideal of 
the Covenant : 

" We promise and swear, by the great name of the 
Lord, our God, to continue in the profession and obedi- 
ence of the said religion ; and that we shall defend the 
same, and resist all their contrarj'- errors and corrup- 
tions, according to our vocation and to the utmost of 
that power which God has put in our hands, all the 
days of our life." 

A people of whom Mr, Bancroft has said: "The 
first voice publicly raised in America to dissolve all 
connection with Great Britain came not from the 



Patriotism of the SovitK 261 

Puritans of New England, nor the Dutch of New 
York, nor the planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch- 
Irish Presbyterians," — the glory of whose character 
reaches its culmination in the words of the Covenanter 
John Witherspoon before the Continental Congress : 

'*To hesitate at this moment is to consent to our 
slavery. That noble instrument upon your table . . . 
should be subscribed this very moment by every pen in 
this house. He that will not respond to its accents, 
and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions, 
is unworthy the name of freeman, . . , and although 
these gray hairs must descend into the sepulchre, I 
would infinitely rather that they should descend hither 
by the hand of the executioner than desert at this crisis 
the sacred cause of my country. ' ' 

In this Southern land mingled with Covenanter and 
Cavalier and Puritan the blood of the Huguenot who 
for his ideal for more that two centuries in France, 
fi-om the Rhine to the Mediterranean, marked the fag- 
got and the gibbet, and could match Claverhouse with 
the Guise, Derry with I^a Rochelle, and the wild moors 
of Scotland and wasted fields of Antrim with the deso- 
late mountains of Cevennes. 

And I make my obeisance to the German, the Irish- 
man, and the Puritan of the South, than whom lived 
no purer patriots, but I am speaking of the controlling 
strains in the South. 

Those peoples largely composing the Southern people 
were dominated by high and peculiar ideals of local. 



262 Some SoTatKem Qviestions 

governmental, and religious right. Yet, whilst they 
loved their country', they were controlled and largely 
limited in their aspirations by the ideal for which they 
contended. In almost every case in their own country 
they would have been satisfied with the attainment of 
that ideal. The Scot was contending with his whole 
soul for religious toleration, the Cavalier for his ideal 
of Church and King, and the Frenchman for a con- 
dition which would free him from social, religious, and 
governmental tyranny of king and noble. With the 
controlling ideal of the Scotchman, the Cavalier, and 
the Englishman, there was the almost equally abiding 
ideal of local control. They all loved their country, 
but in a secondary or subconscious manner. They 
were developing patriotism. Each of these peoples 
was grasping, at different times, and in diverse ways, 
all of its vital elements ; and, whilst contending for the 
high ideals which they loved, they were contending 
for the highest and best constituents of patriotism. In 
every case this ideal, whether it might be religious 
toleration and freedom, or equal taxation and repre- 
sentation, or freedom from class and governmental in- 
justice, exalted the country and increased immeasurably 
the moral stature of the citizen. Yet these constituents 
did not culminate there in the great, vital, and absorb- 
ing ideal of patriotism. 

How quickly do we note this differentiation between 
the people from whom we sprung whilst living in their 
own country, and, afterwards, when living in this 



Patriotism of tKe So\itK 263 

country. There, loyalty to a family, a king, a system 
of religion, was the highest ideal of life. Here, under 
our skies, not environed by the trappings of monarchy 
and traditions of caste and system, and appreciating 
through fierce experiences that his efforts alone were 
to conquer and control the new land, the American col- 
onist quickly and powerfully grasped the great proposi- 
tion that he was the supreme figure and that the country 
and its government belonged to him, and to him alone. 
Here, he was dealing directly with his country, of which 
he knew he was the most important constituent. There, 
he had grown with the generations who believed the 
government could not be conducted without the king 
and the system surrounding him. As a matter of fact, 
in the beginning, when the king was filled with prowess 
and character, this was largely the truth. He was the 
king because he was necessary to the conditions of the 
time. Here, the colonist soon recognized a changed 
condition, that in clearing the forest, defending his 
home, and creating government, kingly leadership and 
trappings were useless and that he was the state and 
practically the responsible head of the government. 

Thus, no king or system could be the supreme ob- 
ject of his affection and nothing intervened between 
him and love of the state, which, without help of king, 
noble, or class, he was creating. When surveying the 
vast forest, the majestic rivers, the unploughed land, and 
the smiling valleys, he recognized that he was the cen- 
tral figure of this marvellous panorama. • Thus, amidst 



264 Some SovatKern. Qviestions 

the majesty and, so far as the government was con- 
cerned, the isolation of his surroundings, there arose in 
his heart a feeling towards his country differing entirely 
from the sentiment that at home environed the Eng- 
lishman, the Frenchman, or Scotchman. 

In other words, there was born pure and undefiled 
patriotism, love of country, with the intervention of no 
lesser ideal which could diminish the splendor of its 
aspiration. 

When you consider the limitations surrounding those 
who largely composed the Southern colonists, nothing 
in history is so eloquent as the growth of this spirit of 
patriotism in the South. At the first, especially in 
Virginia, which we have taken as a type, its inhabitants 
were largely Cavaliers environed by the supreme ideal 
of loyalty to the king. They had been practically ex- 
patriated for this ideal ; yet, under and around this 
loyalty to the king, there was growing the great and 
supreme principle of love of our country for itself, with 
the control of the government by the people as the 
living, breathing essence and evidence of that patriot- 
ism. How marvellous was its development under these 
adverse circumstances. A sentiment which for one 
moment of time, strengthened immeasurably by the 
arrival of those oppressed in Scotland, Ireland, and 
England, never ceased its steady step. Contemplate 
the milestones on the road to this ideal. The path was 
tortuous, weary with waiting, and rank with the weeds 
and grasses of wrongs which could not be resented ; yet 



Patriotism of tHe SoiatK 265 

along its whole length on ever broadening foundations 
are the monuments of our fathers' patriotism. 

Pardon the taking of precious time in this phase of 
the discussion, but what can be more eloquent, what 
more interesting than the contemplation of the growth 
of love of one's country ? Patriotism in every country 
is distinct and moves along distinct lines. Here in the 
South was the growth of patriotism along the distinct 
lines of local self-government, which ever widened in 
its scope. Before the ink was dry on the Charter of 
1619, the Assembly of Virginia, catching with its first 
Usping the breath of freedom, demanded that the Com- 
pany might ' ' allow or disallow of their Orders of Court, 
as his Majesty hath given them power to allow or dis- 
allow our laws." Here was asserted in full life the 
great and underlying principle of our governmental 
existence. Within five years came the memorable de- 
claration of 1624, "that the governor shall not lay any 
taxes or impositions upon the colony, their lands or 
commodities, otherway than by the authority of the 
General Assembly, to be levied and employed as the 
said Assembly shall appoint." 

Men who were felling forests, ploughing the unfur- 
rowed land, and subduing a mighty wilderness in 1635, 
thrust out Governor Harvey and elected a successor, be- 
cause he would not forward their protest to his Majesty. 
By 1650 the Englishman was a Virginian, the Cavalier a 
patriot, and above loyalty to the king there had been 
developed the supreme ideal of love of country. When 



266 Some So\itKern Qviestions 

the Commissioners of Cromwell came to take over the 
government of Cavalier Virginia, they did not find the 
colonists with diverse ideas of loyalty, a population 
distraught with divergent sentiments of fealty, but they 
found a people with one growing supreme ideal and 
that was love of their country, with the right to control 
their own local affairs, and this ideal was superior to 
fealty to king or English Commonwealth. The con- 
ference was between two powers each filled with its 
distinctive idea, and Virginia forced from the victors 
of Naseby and Dunbar the concession that she was ' ' to 
enjoy such freedoms and privileges as belong to the 
free-born people of England" ; and the Virginia As- 
sembly was alone to have the right to tax Virginia. 
Yet, within ten years, with the downfall of the govern- 
ment of Cromwell, and the re-induction into power 
of the king, Cavalier Virginia, caring first for Virginia 
and little for its old ideal, forced from Governor Berke- 
ley, the representative of the fealty of the Cavalier, 
that he was to govern according to the laws of Virginia 
and England, that he was not to dissolve the Assembly 
without the consent of a majority of its members, and 
every writ was to run in the name of the Assembly of 
Virginia. 

Growing patriotism was demanding first the rights 
of the colony, and, as a secondary consideration, fealty 
to king. 

A century before the Revolution how ominous to 
king and to England is the ring of the words of 



Patriotism of tKe SoxitK 267 

Nathaniel Bacon, a son of an English gentleman, who 
then held arms in his hand for love of the new country : 

" That it is the mind of this country, and of Mary 
Land and Carolina also, to cast oJ6F their Governor, and 
the Governors of Carolina have taken no notice of the 
People, nor the People of them, a long time ; and the 
people are resol'd to own their Govemour further ; And 
if wee cannot prevaile by Armes to make our Condi- 
tions for Peace, or obtaine the Priviledge to elect our 
own Govemour, we may retire to Roanoke." 

The old ideal of fealty to king and family and system 
was falling like the forest and in its stead was grow- 
ing that ideal of patriotism which I pray and trust is 
glorifying the opening of your young lives. 

This spirit did not grow in the souls of men whose 
lives were given to contemplation of government. 
There were other things to consider and to accomplish. 
It was accompanied by the twang of the bow, the flash 
of the musket, the burning of the home, and with the 
waving corn trampled in ground wet with the blood of 
savage conflict. It grew with the ring of the axe, the 
birth of the children, with the furrow of the plough, 
with the founding of towns and cities, with the creation 
of states, with institution of laws, with starvation and 
fever, with wrong in England, and oftentimes with 
bigotry and narrowness at home. 

It assumed many shapes, but in every case and con- 
test, through every difficulty and complication, there 
was the one supreme and controlling idea which had 



268 Some SoxitKem Questions 

for its purpose the right of the new country and control 
of its affairs. 

When the right of the colony was concerned, Cavalier, 
Roundhead, Scotch-Irishman, or Frenchman was ready, 
irrespective of former fealty or connection, to contest 
with king or Commonwealth. Patriotism was grasp- 
ing firmly the soul of the people. In one colony and 
period it took the form of opposition to the Navigation 
Act and in another to have free intercourse with other 
colonies. Again it blazed forth over the question of 
the method of appointing the parsons. Here, reason- 
ing from the experience of their fathers in England, 
they withheld suppUes until grievances were righted. 
There, it was as to basis of representation. Then it 
showed its life in unceasing opposition to the preroga- 
tives of the governor appointed by the king. In 
Virginia, whilst the postage laws were obviously bene- 
ficial and important, the Virginians would not allow 
the enforcing of the act, because they believed that 
Parliament had in its passage interfered with the 
authority of the House of Burgesses in regard to local 
government. 

" No sooner was this noised about but a great 
Clamour was raised against it. The people were made 
to believe that the Parl't could not I^evy and Tax (for 
so they call ye Rates of Postage) here without the Con- 
sent of the General Assembly. . . . Thereupon a 
Bill is prepared and passed both Council and Burg's's, 
w'ch, tho' it acknowledges the Act of Parliam't to be 



Patriotism of tKe SovitK 269 

in force here, does effectually prevent its being ever 
put in Execution," was the complaint of Governor 
Spottswood . 

With all the tenacity attending the conflict from 
Magna Charta down to the end of the Stuart Tyranny, 
the colonists never lessened their grim determination 
to absolutely control taxation, and never once was re- 
linquished their effort both to pass every act concerning 
taxation and to expend the money derived therefrom. 

This ideal of patriotism, with its years of sorrow, of 
travail, and of creation, culminated in the resolutions of 
Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses, in 
the Declaration of 1776, and the Convention of 1788. 

It seemed wise that there shotdd be a dual system of 
government and before the wasted field was clothed in 
its robe of green, and ere the patriot had begun to 
realize his freedom, the divergence began as to the unit 
of the ideal of the patriotism which is so vitally im- 
portant to a free government. 

I^t me here be clearly understood that in choosing 
as the subject of this address the patriotism of the 
South, it is not to evince any sectional spirit. It is not 
from any want of catholic feeling. Whilst we of the 
South love our land with a wealth of tender sentiment, 
which possibly does not exist so markedly between 
other sections of our country and their citizens, because 
we and ours have sat with the South at the empty 
table and have walked with her along the road of 
sorrow, yet the supreme object of our patriotic love is 



270 Some SoxitKern Questions 

this great Republic. No section can compare with the 
whole in our love and regard. Our country, undivided 
and indivisible, is a supreme object of our patriotic 
solicitude. Therefore, I am addressing myself to the 
peculiar spirit and local characteristics of the people of 
the South, which I believ^e can, and will, change the 
tendencies which are dangerous to the Republic. 

At first in our country the unit of patriotism was the 
State. This was natural. This feeling was peculiarly 
strong in the South. It came about from the traditions 
of the people and the nature of their situation. The 
Southern colonies were far separated one from the other. 
Furthermore, from the difference in the character of 
charter or government each carried on its own contest 
for its local rights with the mother country or with the 
Indians who surrounded them. Each of the colonies 
was practically a republic. Their citizens met only in- 
frequently, and there obtained the patriarchal and agri- 
cultural system which of itself maintained pristine 
sentiments and conditions. 

The practical unit of livelihood was the isolated plan- 
tation, and thus each colony of the South had grown 
with a feeling of local independence. For protection 
or development it depended upon itself. Thus each 
colony gradually became individualistic in its senti- 
ments, and was practically independent of the other 
colonies. Around its own government and its own af- 
fairs centred its affections. Agriculture and , latterly the 
production of two staples largely occupied the people's 



Patriotism of the SoutK 271 

time and attention. The populations of the colonies 
of the South were largely homogeneous, and after the 
great Scotch-Irish immigration and the German immi- 
gration there was practically no immigration into the 
South. Men from the South who fought in the War 
of 1812 and the Mexican War and the War of i860 were 
the sons and grandsons of the men who carried arms in 
the Revolution of 1776. The people of the South as I 
have endeavored to show sprang from the European 
peoples who had been from time immemorial contest- 
ing for their local rights. 

Now, such was not the condition in the North. 
There the rigors of the climate and the topography of 
the country rapidly brought about a different situation. 
The people grew together in villages, the meetings be- 
tween the colonies were relatively frequent. Their 
intercourse was comparatively easy. They did not 
preserve the homogeneity of their peoples. New peo- 
ples were continually arriving with new ideals, with 
diverse feelings, with no knowledge or care for the 
olden traditions of the State. Manufacturing occupied 
a country filled with rivers and waterfalls and they 
quickly turned to the sea and covered the ocean with 
their fleets. 

At the time of the Declaration of Independence the 
ideal of local patriotism was earnest in the North as in 
the South. Massachusetts was at first filled with the 
local ideal, but the State was divided and her daughters 
necessarily did not preserve that ideal which had such 



272 Some SoxitKem Questions 

vigorous life in the mother State. The diverse popu- 
lations and interests of New York prevented the com- 
plete development of the local ideal of patriotism. 

Notwithstanding these conditions, at first, in the 
North, fealty to the State obtained and this status 
largely controlled its sentiment for forty years after the 
Declaration of Independence. The unit of patriotism 
was local. Gradually, with the conditions I have men- 
tioned, it began to change and the object of fealty began 
to be the General Government. Nationalization began 
to crystallize. New populations were occupying the 
towns and cities which were springing up in its manu- 
facturing regions. When the new people came, in 
many instances they occupied new States which were 
the creations of the General Government. This feeUng 
towards the National Government, this change of the 
unit of patriotism was increased and accentuated by 
the second War of Independence. It was enormously 
strengthened by the Mexican War. It was further 
strengthened by the economic condition of the North, 
whose manufacturing energies were largely benefited 
by the laws passed by the General Government. 

The ideal of local patriotism in the North was chang- 
ing into the ideal of personal liberty. Now do not 
understand me that there was any lessening of the 
patriotism of the North. Its ideal was simply chang- 
ing with the times and with its natural conditions. As 
the ideal of patriotism generalized under the conditions 
of the day there quickly grew the ideal of personal 



Patriotism of tHe So\ith 273 

liberty. This ideal was aided in its growth by the 
economic condition of the South. There the institu- 
tion of slavery was the most marked development of 
the Southern life. It was lawful and was recognized 
by both North and South Economically it was not 
suited to the North and soon free labor occupied its 
place. 

With the growth of time there arose a sentiment 
which, so far as the North was concerned, partook of 
the moral ideal and, rapidly joining with the various 
causes which I have mentioned, begat in the North a 
different unit of patriotism. The North was gradually 
nationalizing around an issue which in its eyes had 
begun to be a moral issue. The South adhered to 
her old ideal of fealty to the State, of local patriotism, 
and being in close contact with those States which she 
conceived were interfering with her local rights and 
local institutions naturally intensified her feeling of 
patriotism to the State. The local unit of patriotism 
grew stronger with her. In other words, the South 
practically nationalized around the State, which was 
her pristine unit of patriotism. The North with her 
strengthened ideal of personal liberty and fealty to the 
General Government, which had gradually grown since 
1825, believed that the South was violating the spirit 
of the Constitution, which guaranteed liberty to every 
man. The South, preserving her old ideals of local 
patriotism and State fealty, believed that with her was 
the great moral issue and that her ancient rights, 



2 74 Some SoxitHem Qiaestions 

securely preserved to her upon her entry into the 
General Government, were being infringed. 

Hence arose the great moral conflict which settled 
the question of the constitutional secession of a State, 
but which left in the hearts of the Southern people that 
pristine ideal of local patriotism, which, while entirely 
loyal to the common country, beheves that the great 
retained rights of the State under the Constitution of 
our fathers should ever remain unshorn of their power 
and unimpaired in their strength. 

Is the South correct in its assertion that the preserva- 
tion at this time of the full powers of the State under 
the Constitution is the exercise of the most exalted 
patriotism ? Whilst we garnish and strengthen the 
great temple enshrining the General Government, shall 
we allow its stately proportions to obscure the lights 
burning upon the altars of the States ? This is the great 
and insistent question. The Fathers considered the 
rights of the State as vital, that the General Government 
could not live without their absolute preservation, and 
that the essence of the government created by them was 
the preservation in its entirety of both divisions of our 
government. Is not this to-day as important as when 
our fathers entered upon the conflict for liberty ? After 
all, it is supremely a question of liberty and its perpet- 
uation. Liberty is the crowning glory of patriot- 
ism. Is it not as sweet to-day as it was to the 
Fathers ? And should it not be as carefully nurtured ^ 
Shall we forget its importance in its continual use ? 



Patriotism of tKe SovitK 275 

The Fathers had seen the splendor of the countries of 
history go down to darkness, and all from the same 
cause. They believed that in the system of representa- 
tive government with local balances against the central 
power they had found the secret of free government 
which would go on forever. Upon this foundation 
they constructed a government which conserves, as 
never before, justice and liberty. Are not the mighty 
spirits of the Fathers yet with us and is not the per- 
petuation of these ideals of government the exercise of 
the most exalted patriotism ? 

" I will wait with hopes that the spirit which pre- 
dominated in the Revolution is not gone, nor the cause 
of those attached to the Revolution lost." 

That the supreme importance of the State may be 
recalled, and that you may realize that the Fathers 
believed that only through its preservation could this 
government be perpetuated, let us listen again to their 
words. 

Says Patrick Henry in the Convention of 1788 : 

*' States are the characteristics and the soul of a con- 
federation. If the States be not the agents of this 
compact, it must be one great, consolidated, national 
government of the people of all the States." 

Says Alexander Hamilton, himself no friend to great 
power in the State, yet recognizing that without it the 
General Government could not live : 

" While the constitution continues to be read and its 
principles known, the states must, by every rational 



276 Some SovitHern Qviestions 

man, be considered as essential component parts of the 
union. . . . The destruction of the states must be 
at once a political suicide. Can the national govern- 
ment be guilty of this madness ? ' ' 

And again : 

* ' It may safely be received as an axiom in our 
political system, that the state governments will, in all 
possible contingencies, afford complete security against 
invasions of the public liberty by national authority. 
In a confederacy, the people, without exaggeration, 
may be said to be entirely masters of their own 
fate." 

lyisten to Edmund Pendleton : 

"It is the interest of the federal to preserve the 
state governments. . . . Unless there be state 
legislatures to continue the existence of congress, and 
preserve order and peace among the inhabitants, this 
general government, which gentlemen suppose will 
annihilate the state government, must itself be de- 
stroyed." 

Says Fisher Ames: 

"The state governments represent the wishes, and 
feelings, and local interests of the people. They will 
afford a shelter against the abuse of power ; and will be 
the natural avengers of our violated rights." 

Said Oliver Ellsworth : 

' ' I turn my eyes to the states for the preservation 
of my rights. . . . The greatest happiness I ex- 
pect in this life, I can derive from these alone. This 



Patriotism of tHe So\ith 277 

happiness depends on their existence, as much as a 
new-born infant on its mother for nourishment. ' ' 

Says Thomas Jefferson : 

" The support of the State governments in all their 
rights, as the most competent administrations for our 
domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against 
anti-republican tendencies. ' ' 

Have not these words of the Fathers been verified by 
the accomplishment of nearly a century and a half of 
life ? Where is there such freedom ? What country 
has been blessed with such permanence and happiness 
and individual aspiration and liberty ? Is not a theory 
of government so wonderful in its perpetuation along 
the lines laid out by them worthy to be adhered to in 
the strict letter of the Constitution ? The Fathers had 
seen the robe of consolidated power cover whole peo- 
ples with its glitter and imperial grandeur. They had 
seen the liberty of many peoples go as surely as history 
writes its decrees. 

Hence, not regarding their experience of contempo- 
rary government and the teachings of history, they 
adopted a system differing from all other governments. 
A system whose foundation is the State with vital in- 
herent rights, including that of self-government, and a 
National Government of strictly enumerated powers 
under a rigid written constitution, with a disinterested 
tribunal to arbitrate the great questions arising under its 
dual system. Other times and countries had witnessed 
nationalized and imperial governments, but the distin- 



278 Some SoMtKern Questions 

guishing features of our government from others, as 
the Fathers created and intended it should live, is the 
life and structure of the individual State and the repre- 
sentation in the General Government based upon the 
State, Could a consolidated system have preserved our 
freedom and performed the important work demanded 
by the conditions of this Republic ? I^et us consider for 
a moment this most important question. Under the 
life of the State has grown an individuality, a local 
character, a personal liberty which could not grow 
under a consolidated government. Men at home have 
been creating States, developing State life and theories 
of State government, stamping individuality upon them- 
selves, upon legislation, and upon the State, which 
could not occur under a centralized government. Men 
of the plough and the forest and the shop have been do- 
ing work which under other systems has been reserved 
for kings, and princes, and the great of the land. 

The State has been the forum of the people. Upon 
it they have tried their experiments of law and legisla- 
tion. Upon the State they have lavished their energy 
and their character. A vast country extending from 
ocean to ocean with diverse ideas and demands could 
only be developed by the marvellous workings of the 
state governments, each acting in its own way under 
control of its own citizens as its diverse situation and 
conditions demanded. 

What a momentous part the State has played in that 
most important of all functions of free government, the 



Patriotism of the SovitK 279 

creation of the citizen. What other system could be 
devised so well for this supreme purpose ? He is part 
of the State, he sees the effect and tries the working of 
different theories of government upon the State whose 
rights are inherent and whose life touches the dignity 
and daily being of the people. The laws which he is 
creating are upon foundations free from assault by the 
majority in the General Government. This appeals to 
his local state pride. He contemplates the State in its 
evolution, and its character is the character which he 
himself imparts to it. Its dignity grows with his growth 
and its financial and governmental as well as moral in- 
tegrity is the reflection of those exalted sentiments in 
his own bosom. 

The State educates the citizen in a continuous civil 
existence, and only by this system could the control 
of its life be entirely under the supervision of the 
citizen. 

The dual system as the Fathers created it has been 
the best method for the upbuilding of a new country. 
The citizen appreciates the peculiar needs of his State 
and from his experience its peculiar necessities are pro- 
vided. Thus the local needs and sentiments of a State 
are conserved, both to become part of that abiding 
patriotism which grows with the citizen's pride in the 
creation of his own exertions and mind. By the self- 
denial and energy and honesty of the citizen arises the 
State, and hence grows in its heart that civic pride 
in its exalted characteristics which could not be felt 



28o Some SoiatHem Questions 

towards a far-distant government, reaching down to an 
unmarked district or department. 

Under the government of the State there has grown 
the most perfect system of domestic and local laws 
which has blessed the world. They are the laws which 
deserve the whole aspirations of the citizen's life and 
the holiest effort of his hands. These laws conserve 
every interest in his life. They are not laws created 
in a far-away capital of a consolidated country. They 
are the laws growing up under the supervision and 
control of the citizen himself They are the laws which 
regulate the expenditures and control the sources of 
the supply. Under this system the citizen is not alone 
learning the great problems of State and self govern- 
ment, but whilst he is doing so he is assisting in the 
adorning and glorifying of the State in its material and 
civil life. 

Where since work was given as the lot of man was 
there such field as the State for supreme efforts of an 
enlightened and interested patriotism ? The laws of 
the State touch with living power every phase of exist- 
ence. Her laws are the sacred laws. They are the 
laws upon which are founded the hearthstone. They 
are the home laws. They are the laws touching per- 
sonal happiness, and to increase and conserve that hap- 
piness is the ultimate object of the State. They control 
taxation and through its power your land may glow 
with the yellow of the waving corn and with the mira- 
cle of the ripening fruit, or weep with the desolation and 



Patriotism of tHe SoutH 281 

ruin wrought by the heavy step of the demagogue. 
They wave their mighty wand and school and college 
arise and carry blessed life-giving hope and aspiration 
into the souls of those who will adorn and glorify our 
citizenship. They directly reach the life of the banker 
with his dollars, the fisherman with his nets, the mer- 
chant with his wares, and the farmer with his lands. 
By their wisdom the wilderness sings with the music 
of the wheels and the mountain gives forth its riches 
reserved in its secret fastnesses by the Creator for the 
fruition of this thrice-blessed people. They hold justice 
with an even hand for rich and poor and pen the de- 
crees of life and liberty. They punish the criminal, 
control disorder, and reward virtue. They surround 
your life in its every phase — then should they not have 
your patriotic effort ? Should not your love, your sac- 
rifice, your honor, and your patriotism permeate the 
laws of the State as in the olden days the myrrh and 
frankincense filled the glory of the Temple ? Surely the 
State has fulfilled the part designed for it by the Fathers, 
and is not this marvellous civilization a witness beyond 
compare against the sentiment which would impair the 
system which has wrought this wondrous result ? 

With the States preserved in their inherent life under 
the dual system, the Fathers believed they had forever 
saved their country from the fears of despotism and the 
exercise of arbitrary power. It was not their intention 
to create a government where a great central power 
could be paramount. They preser\'ed the States in all 



282 Some SoxitHern Qviestions 

of their rights, except those rights which were ex- 
pressly given to the General Government under the 
Constitution, and those rights so given were carefully- 
guarded. They feared despotism and they loved 
liberty. With the rights of the States preserved, with 
the powers of the General Government delimited and 
rigidly defined, the central power could not obtain 
undue power. 

How carefully are the rights of the States protected 
and their inherent powers preserved. How plainly is 
the belief of the Fathers shown, that liberty can only 
be perpetuated by a strict observance of the principles 
enumerated in the Constitution and the amendments 
thereto. It is but evident that they believed that these 
principles should control the future life of the country 
they were giving to their children. All of the great 
principles of liberty are carefully set out in the amend- 
ments to the Constitution, and every one of the original 
amendments is for the purpose of preserving in their 
entirety the reserved rights of the State and the liberties 
of the people. With the Constitution of our fathers 
casting around us its beneficent provisions, if we 
sacredly guard the exalted ideals of a patriotic people, 
if we preserve the rights secured to us by this wonder- 
fill instrument designed for the protection of the dual 
system, can liberty be impaired ? 

What a majestic procession of the canons of liberty 
are the amendments to the Constitution of the United 
States, adopted by the Fathers for the virtual preserva- 



Patriotism of tKe So\itH 283 

tion of the rights of the State. They are practically the 
principles for which men who have loved liberty and 
revered the ideals of patriotism in all times and in all 
countries have shed their blood and given their lives, 
lyisten to the enunciation of these great principles : 
Congress shall make no law respecting an establish- 
ment of religion or abridging the freedom of speech or 
of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to 
assemble to petition the government for a redress of 
grievances. That the guarantees reserved to the States 
may not be valueless because they are without power, 
the right of the people to bear arms and maintain a 
well regulated militia for the security of the State shall 
not be infringed upon. The people shall be secure in 
their persons, houses, papers, and effects against un- 
reasonable searches and seizures, and no warrants shall 
issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or 
aflSrmation describing the place to be searched and the 
person or thing to be seized. No person shall be held 
to answer for a capital or infamous crime unless on 
presentment or indictment of a grand jury, nor shall 
any person be subjected for the same offence to be twice 
put in jeopardy for life or limb, nor be compelled to be 
a witness against himself nor be deprived of life, liberty, 
and property without due process of law. Nor shall 
private property be taken for public use without just 
compensation. The accused shall enjoy the right to a 
speedy, public trial by an impartial jury of the vicinage, 
and he shall be informed of the nature and cause of the 



284 Some SovitHem Qviestions 

accusation and be confronted with the witnesses against 
him. The right of trial by jury shall be jealously pre- 
served, and excessive bail shall not be required or exces- 
sive jBnes imposed or unusual punishments inflicted. 
The judicial power of the United States shall not be con- 
strued to extend to any suit prosecuted against one of the 
United States by citizens of another or of a foreign 
state; and further, this precious heritage of liberty 
enunciates with distinctness and exactness the great 
cardinal principle of those who believe in the preserva- 
tion of all the powers of the States in their absolute 
entirety and vigor, that the enumeration in the Consti- 
tution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny 
or disparage others retained by the people, and that 
the powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, 
are reserved to the States respectively or to the 
people. 

The Fathers, touching hands with despotism, know- 
ing the terrors of absolutism, having experience of un- 
equal and unjust government, appreciating from war 
and wasted country and sacrifice that liberty could 
only be made permanent by the preservation of these 
great principles in the government which they were 
creating, gave that government to us hedged about 
with these precious principles which with undying 
vigilance and jealousy should be guarded. 

How stand the governmental forces to-day? Have 
the great controlling canons of the country's life been 



Patriotism of tKe SoutVi 285 

preserved ? Are the rights intended to be protected by 
those organic principles still intact ? 

Whilst the intention of the Fathers was so clear, 
their fear of a great central power so express, and their 
determination that the General Government should 
possess only the powers delegated to it, still every one 
who loves his country, whose eyes are not closed to its 
dangers, cannot but see that the powers of the General 
Government in every department of its Hfe have in- 
finitely broadened with the passing years. It is as 
plain that the rights and the powers of the State have 
been as surely narrowed. These tendencies have not 
been sporadic. Both tendencies have been equally 
continuous, steady, and sure. By interpretation and 
explanation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court, 
by amendment as provided by the Constitution, by 
war, by congressional act, which is practically the ex- 
pression of public opinion, the powers of the General 
Government have gathered strength, mighty and un- 
precedented, in the history of government. On the 
other hand is the significant fact that not one of the 
powers of the State have been widened by any influence, 
whether judicial decision, legislation, public opinion, 
war, or amendment. It is too plain to conceal that 
there has grown a feeling which would obliterate the 
rights of the State, which would invest in the strong 
hands of the General Government all of the powers 
which the Fathers believed were necessary to the State 
to keep free and perpetual the government which they 



286 Some SoiatHem Qviestions 

liad created. Within the last decade the vast material 
increase in the country's power and wealth and the 
widening of its horizon, governmental and commercial, 
seem to have swept away the great constitutional 
landmarks which have made possible the most marvel- 
lous development of liberty the world has ever seen. 

A great Senator lately declared that with the growth 
of the country, the preservation of property, its man- 
agement and control, is the chief interest of a great 
people. 

Another authority, with the prestige of great place, 
declares that the condition of the day demands that 
theories of government should not be the subject of the 
people's contemplation but rather the administration of 
affairs. 

A citizen of national repute voices the sentiment that 
commerce and development should know no State lines. 

The infringement of fundamental laws is insidious, 
yet we have heard it boldly declared from the high 
place once occupied by Washington that : "In some 
cases this governmental action must be exercised by 
the several States individually. In yet others it has 
become increasingly evident that no efficient State 
action is possible, and that we need, through executive 
action, through legislation, and through judicial in- 
terpretation and construction of law, to increase the 
power of the Federal Government. If we fail thus to 
increase it, we show our impotence." 

We have heard but yesterday from the great place 



Patriotism of tKe SoxitH 287 

of the Secretary of State : " It may be that such control 
would better be exercised in particular instances by 
the government of the States, but the people will have 
the control they need either from the States or from 
the National Government, and if the State fails to 
furnish it in due measure, sooner or later construc- 
tions of the Constitution will be found to vest the 
power where it will be exercised — in the National 
Government." 

These are but illustrations of the direction of public 
thought, that great constitutional limitations, which 
the fathers of free government thought vital, are not to 
be considered when they interfere in any manner with 
the interest or the feeling of the day. The exigencies 
of this occasion will only allow me to succinctly advert 
to them to show how marvellously swift has been the 
increase of the powers of the General Government and 
how equally sure has been the destruction of the rights 
of the States. It would surely be more pleasant to 
discuss the great principles involved in this subject, 
but the advance against the constitutional limitations 
of our country will be more readily appreciated by 
concrete illustration. 

The Supreme Court, under the guidance of Chief 
Justice Marshall, whose name we speak with reverence, 
fearing a repetition of the experience under the original 
confederation of the States, steadily and quickly, by in- 
terpretation of the Constitution, widened and deepened 
the powers of the General Government. For thirty- 



288 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

five years during the formative period of our couatr3'^'s 
life the powers of the greatest English-speaking judge 
were directed to building, strong and secure, its foimda- 
tions. A brief reference to the great principles decided 
shows that from the very beginning of the life of this 
co-ordinate branch of our government the fullest and 
broadest amplitude of interpretation and deduction of 
the Constitution has characterized the judgments of 
the Court. 

" Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope 
of the Constitution, and all means which are proper, 
which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not 
prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the 
Constitution, are constitutional," forms the broad judi- 
cial basis for the far-reaching corollaries and deductions 
around which has been built up the vast and steadily 
increasing power of the Federal Government. 

How full are the years of the Court with the estab- 
lishment of the great national powers of the govern- 
ment. How quickly is the direction towards the 
narrowing of the constitutional rights of the State, 
With the early years was the decision of the Supreme 
Court as to the establishment of the national bank and 
of the great principle forbidding the States to interfere 
with any of the constitutional methods of carrying out 
its provisions by the General Government. And quickly 
came the settlement of the supreme position of the Court 
for decision upon the Constitution, and the settlement 
of its own position as one of the great co-ordinate 



Patriotism of tKe SoutK 289 

departments of the government, and with it the declara- 
tion of the supremacy of the Constitution. 

Before the white sails of the ships had been furled by 
the power of steam came the establishment by judicial 
authority of the power of the General Government over 
interstate commerce and the practical and absolute 
control by the General Government of the navigable 
streams of the country, and with this enormous power 
quickly came the decision of this august tribunal giving 
to Congress the fullest amplitude and discretion in choos- 
ing the means to carry into effect the powers vested 
in the National Government, and giving the Supreme 
Court supervisory powers over the courts of the States. 
With these great powers was the decision that no State 
should annul a decision of the Federal Court, and the 
right to hold that a State law was unconstitutional, and 
that the Supreme Court was supreme as to the validity 
of a treaty. These are but mere mention of decisions 
in a direction which has never varied its steady course. 

The determination of the machinery of government, 
as set out in the Constitution, was necessarily brief, but 
those administrative powers have been declared opera- 
tive and effective by the widest judicial deduction. 

From the taxing and borrowing and general welfare 
clauses of the Constitution, with the decisions of the Court 
denying the right of the States to interfere by taxation 
or otherwise, has grown all of the vast machinery as to 
tariffs and custom houses and national banks, and with 
the amplification of these powers the upholding of the 



290 Some So\itKern Questions 

vast and complicated system of commercial law and of 
civil provisions to carry into effect the powers but men- 
tioned in the Constitution. From the brief commerce 
clause of the Constitution by the broad interpretation 
and deduction as to its incidental powers by the Court 
has grown the powerful machinery of administrative 
law concerning transportation, immigration, improve- 
ment of rivers, building of harbors, control of commerce 
between the States and foreign countries, and the au- 
thority to create railroad commissions with enormous 
and increasing powers as to control of rates and 
transportation. 

Whilst such was the steady and sure trend of the 
decisions of the Court, broadening and widening the 
powers of the Federal Government, up to the great con- 
flict between the States, since that time, by reason of 
the post-bellum amendments, the rights of the National 
Government have again been judicially broadened and 
the rights of the States have been proportionally 
narrowed. 

We bow with reverence to the wisdom of the Fathers 
in establishing a tribunal which protects the people 
against themselves, for without it, in the fierce aftermath 
of the war, amidst the feelings stirred by that great 
conflict, the domestic and local rights of the State un- 
der a constitution subject to legislation, as is the British 
constitution, would long since have perished, and we 
would, whilst living under the forms of a republic, yet 
be under the control of a consolidated government. 



Patriotism of tKe SoiatK 291 

Says Justice Brewer, one of the great lawyers in the 
history of the Court, as to the decisions on the later 
amendments : 

"While it maybe said that the decisions thus far 
have been in restraint of the transfer by virtue of these 
amendments of the entire sovereignty of the State, yet 
the amendments themselves increase the power of the 
nation and give it a larger control over the internal life 
of the Republic, and to this extent tend to increase the 
one at the expense of the other. It must not be sup- 
posed that during this second period there has been any 
lessening on the part of the Supreme Court of a vigor- 
ous assertion of national stability. On the contrary, 
the ruling made in the first period has been re-afl&rmed 
and added to. And in upholding the provisions of the 
recent amendments, it has necessarily given a wider 
reach and an increased eflBciency to the powers of the 
national government." 

The decisions of the Court concerning the rights of 
the States under the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fif- 
teenth Amendments have increased the power of the 
General Government far beyond that ever contemplated 
bj' the Fathers. The decisions since the war have 
crowned with approval the exercise of sovereign powers 
never supposed to be inherent in the Constitution. In 
the Legal Tender Cases was the settlement of power 
beyond any ever before claimed for the General Gov- 
ernment, that the National Government had been es- 
tablished with inherent sovereign powers, that the right 



292 Some SoxitKern Qxaestions 

to issue money in paper was therefore properly deduced 
from the constitutional right to coin and borrow money. 
A right so enormous in its reach and so revolutionary 
as to the basic powers of this government is beyond the 
conception of those who believe that this is a govern- 
ment of enumerated powers and that it can only exercise 
those expressly conferred upon it by the Constitution. 

It ill becomes us to criticise the decisions of the great 
Court established by the Constitution, but when that 
Court decides that sovereign powers are inherent, every 
man who loves his country fears for the Constitution 
and the liberties of the people. 

So in the Mormon Church Cases, the decision of the 
Court that the treaty-making power and the power to 
declare war gives the right to acquire territory, which 
power is incident to national sovereignty by reason of 
this power, the Court held that Congress had a right to 
legislate for this territory and had complete authority 
over its people and it was under its legislative discretion, 
and the National Government confiscated the property 
of the Church and diverted its proceeds to the general 
use. 

Says a great lawyer : 

"This decision became of extraordinary interest in 
connection with the extension of the jurisdiction of the 
United States over Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philip- 
pines, in 1898. If the construction of the Constitution 
which this decision made is to regulate the government 
of these new acquisitions, then the American people, 



Patriotism of the SovitK 293 

acting througli Congress, can forbid the people of any 
of these new acquisitions to assemble for the purpose 
of political discussion, to petition our government for 
redress of grievances, and to bear arms. Congress can 
provide for searches and seizures of the persons dwell- 
ing in these acquisitions, — their houses, papers, and 
eflfects, — in modes that are recognized as illegal when 
employed in any American commonwealth." 

Such is the significance of the decision in the Insu- 
lar Cases, which places outlying territory acquired by 
treaty or war under a government such as Congress 
may determine, in its discretion, whether different or 
not from the government of other territories created 
under the law of the land. 

Under these latter decisions the great fundamental 
right of trial by jury bequeathed to us by the common 
law and guaranteed to us by the Constitution of the 
Fathers has been abrogated in the colonies and depend- 
encies owned by the United States, and life may be 
taken by judicial process and the victim may walk to 
the scaffold or suffer loss of liberty or property without 
ever having looked upon the faces of the twelve jury- 
men who for a thousand years, under fundamental law, 
have stood between those living under Anglo-Saxon 
institutions and the loss of life, liberty, and property. 

This discussion, necessarily brief, has been made to 
illustrate the tremendous significance of the fact that 
from the institution of the Supreme Court down to the 
present day, the whole trend of its decisions has been 



294 Some SovitKem Questions 

to the upholding and strengthening of the powers of 
the National Government and relatively depleting and 
destroying those of the States and the people. 

It is adverted to furthermore to show that its latter 
decisions have grasped strange ideas of power which if 
carried to the ultimate conclusion will surely and ab- 
solutely break down the constitutional guarantees of the 
State and impair the liberty of the people. 

Whilst in the judicial department we have witnessed 
this gradual and sure increase in the power of the 
National Government, it is in the administrative, 
executive, and legislative branches of our government 
where its advance has been most appalling. The 
Fathers feared a paternal government. A paternal 
government was the government with which they were 
acquainted in history and experience. They provided 
expressly through the amendments that the ' ' enumer- 
ation in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be 
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the 
people," and further " the powers not delegated to the 
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it 
to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or 
to the people." 

Yet, notwithstanding these express provisions, the 
General Government, by legislation, administrative or 
executive action, or judicial decision, has invaded many 
reserved rights of the States and the people. Is not 
this never-ceasing tendency one to excite the fear of 
those who love our country? Should not patriotism 



Patriotism of tKe SoiatK 295 

be alarmed ? Should not this governmental direction 
be arrested ? Will not some day the usurper come ? 
Should not patriotism grasp the weapon presented by 
the Fathers, and demand the preservation of the State 
with all of its powers ? In what part of our land shall 
the battle-cry for the protection of the constitutional 
rights of the people and of the State be more resolutely 
heard than from this old University, redolent with blood 
shed for liberty, whose whole life is glorified by 
patriotic effort, and whose sons in every war of our 
country have laid aside the book and grasped the 
sword ? 

Where more sacred soil to speak of love of country ! 
Where more hallowed fane, on bended knee to pray 
for guidance ! To what temple do more thronging 
memories of loving sacrifice for country cling like the 
lichens and mosses of time than to these venerable 
walls ! Christened at thy birth with the very name of 
liberty, glorified with the thought and regard of the 
Father of our Country, hallowed with the gentleness 
and the love of him who was part of our sacrifice, we 
reverence thee for what thou hast done. Where in all 
of this broad land of lake and river and fertile field 
such inspiration for liberty and holy love of country ! 
I would call on thy sons from Yorktown and King's 
Mountain and Valley Forge, from New Orleans, from 
Chapultepec and Vera Cruz,from Gettysburg, Antietam, 
Port Republic, and Appomattox, and pray that their 
exaltation of love of country, supreme to all thought of 



296 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

life or earthly care, would descend upon thy children 
to-day assembled in this thy holy place. 

Guarded by the spectral hosts of thy sons, " all the 
knees of which have not bowed unto Baal and every 
mouth which hath not kissed him," may thy power, 
partaking of the life of thy encircling mountains, on 
whose altars the beacon fires of liberty in every crisis 
of our country have flamed wide and clear, inspire 
for great and holy things those who walk under the 
watch and ward of thy towers. May peace linger 
around thy walls, from whose wide portals no one was 
ever turned, although clothed in the sackcloth of 
poverty, and whose broad democracy demands only 
integrity and character as the supreme requisites for 
thy sons. 

The sections of the Constitution defining congress- 
ional power to lay and collect taxes, to provide for the 
common defence and general welfare of the United 
States, to coin and borrow money, to regulate commerce 
with foreign nations and among the several States, to 
establish post-roads and post-ofl&ces, and with the right 
to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into 
execution these constitutional powers, have been the 
forces invoked for legislative and administrative ad- 
vance and for power to curtail and abrogate the rights 
of the people and of the State. There is only time for 
a brief mention of the most startling exercises of the 
Federal advance. To discuss executive encroachment 
will hurry this address into the forbidden domain of 



Patriotism of tHe SovitK 297 

politics. Hence I will advert only to some phases of 
Congressional usurpation. 

Under the interstate commerce power which was 
practically intended by the founders of the government 
to prevent the States from placing charges upon in- 
terstate commerce, which commerce practically meant 
water transportation from the rivers and harbors of the 
different States, there has grown an enormous and in- 
creasing control of the domestic government of the 
States, which was never contemplated by the Fathers. 
The charges contemplated were the charges placed 
upon commerce by the exaction of a harbor license or 
other local tax by one State upon the commerce coming 
in from or going out to another. Yet under these 
powers, which were relatively slight, has grown the 
inordinate control of interstate commerce. 

Under the later constructions of this clause, practi- 
cally nothing which grows from the ground, nothing 
concerning the morals of the people, nothing which 
touches our commercial life and which we eat or wear, 
is excepted from its all-consuming power. To glorify 
its demands for control of all commerce our hallowed 
guarantees are threatened and the rights of the States 
are held for naught. Amplifying the enormous power 
of the Interstate Act, Congress has passed the act pro- 
viding for the control by the General Government of 
foods and drugs in interstate commerce. This means 
that under the power of this law every product of food 
or drink, every drug or substance which could be used 



298 Some SoMtHern Q\iestioiis 

to sustain life, whether pure or not, is under the control, 
inspection, management, and transportation of the Fed- 
eral Government. Thus the domestic and police laws 
of the State, in so far as they touch these great pro- 
ducts necessary to life, are destroyed and placed under 
the control of the ever- widening powers of the Federal 
Government. 

This omnipotent clause has not alone grasped the 
foods of the people, their labor, and their drink, but it 
has taken cognizance and control of their morals. In the 
effort to do away with the effect of lotteries, which in 
itself all will commend, the powers of the act were in- 
voked and under its provisions a lottery ticket was de- 
cided to be a subject of commerce and its carriage was 
held to be against the Interstate Commerce Act and 
thus the lottery was destroyed. This decision was 
for the purpose alone of reaching a moral question. 
Interstate commerce was a mere pretence. Such is 
the effect of the law passed to prevent and forbid 
the manufacture of oleomargarine. This was under the 
taxing clause of the Constitution, and was for the 
frankly avowed purpose of destroying the manufac- 
ture of oleomargarine and protecting another indus- 
try. The bill became a law notwithstanding the 
avowal of its sponsors that its purpose was, through 
the governmental power of taxation, to destroy the 
manufacture of oleomargarine, and that the passage of 
the law would not produce a dollar of revenue to the 
government, and we have here one of the great powers 



Patriotism of the South 299 

of the Federal Government used for a purpose entirely- 
different from that contemplated by the law under 
which the bill was passed. However important and 
commendable the purpose, is it not dangerous beyond 
words when the tremendous powers of the Federal 
Government are invoked for one purpose when another 
purpose is actually sought to be effected ? What can 
we expect ? Powers which are sought to-day for a good 
purpose may be sought for an improper purpose to- 
morrow. This government is a government of limited 
powers. Our fathers feared a government of unlimited 
powers. They placed restrictions around every act of 
the General Government and if those restrictions are to 
be removed for one purpose, is not the precedent afforded 
for these enormous powers being used for sinister pur- 
poses against the life of the State and the liberties of the 
people ? Says a great lawyer and writer : 

" This lottery case is the most important, as bearing 
upon the relations between our state and national gov- 
ernments and the powers vested in each, which ever 
has been decided by the United States Supreme Court. 
If it is to remain the law, the idea of the founders that 
the power vested in Congress was simply to protect 
commerce from acts of interference by state governments 
has been wholly destroyed. The pght of the national 
government to pass a pure food law, or a prohibitive 
tax on oleomargarine, an act to prevent the importation 
of teas below a certain quality or flavor, and proposed 
laws for the regulation of insurance and hours of labor 



300 Some SovitKern Q\iestioiis 

in various employments, are all dependent upon the 
soundness of this decision. Can it be that the power 
given Congress to regulate commerce between the states 
was intended to permit it to enter upon the reformation 
of society ? ' ' 

Under this decision Congress may place upon inter- 
state commerce any restrictions it may wish. When 
will this power find its limitations ? — for, says the 
Court in this case : 

' ' The present case does not require the court to de- 
clare the full extent of the power that Congress may 
exercise in the regulation of commerce among the 
states." 

Pardon further concrete illustrations of the expansion 
of the governmental powers under the Interstate Act at 
the expense of the rights of the States and the people. 
A license is demanded in high places for the control 
of goods sent from one State to another. Under this 
theory of government may we not soon see every en- 
gineer and fireman of a train carrying commodities 
between States, every clerk who signs a bill of lading 
or check for interstate commerce, and every workman 
who trundles a cart laden with the goods of interstate 
commerce compelled to have a license, and look to the 
General Government as the representative of his life, 
labor, and protection ? To-day every engineer, fireman, 
or telegraph operator employed in interstate commerce 
has his hours of labor and method of employment 
regulated by congressional act. The Senate of the 



Patriotism of tKe SovitK 3°^ 

United States has just rested from the conflict over the 
introduction of the law and its advocacy by a dis- 
tinguished Senator, placing child labor through this 
power under the control of the General Government 
and regulating its hours of labor and the age and con- 
ditions of its employment. Shall we not soon see all 
labor under governmental control ? 

Under the influence of this act eighty per cent, of the 
coal, the cotton, the wheat, the corn, the ore, and the 
other vast and unnumbered products of the ground and 
labor are practically under the control of the General 
Government. With the continual and steady length- 
ening and the broadening of the powers of this act 
it is diflScult to know where and when the wheat of 
the farmers, the coal of the miners, the cotton of the 
planter comes under the jurisdiction of the Federal 
Government. 

In none of the departments of the great paternal and 
despotic governments of the world is there a greater 
exercise of paternalism than is witnessed in the De- 
partment of Agriculture. In this Department is the 
greatest assault upon the rights of the State in the 
history of this government. In the midst of the waving 
com and the golden wheat, beside the running water, 
and under the blue sky and the bright sun, surrounded 
by the fruits and the flowers which the power of in- 
dependent labor has brought into blessed life, we have 
been taught is to be found the purest and most un- 
selfish patriotism. This citadel of patriotism has been 



302 Some SoxatKern Qxiestions 

invaded. Without one line of constitutional power, 
against the express statement of the Fathers in con- 
vention assembled, in the institution of this govern- 
ment, this Department has been created and it has 
usurped the most sacred rights of the State. It has 
practically assumed control of the domestic life of the 
country. It is expending millions teaching the people 
what to eat. It has invaded the kitchen, telling the 
housewife how to cook. It is showing the farmers how 
to feed and raise stock. It is telling the people what 
to drink and wear. It is analyzing and testing foods 
and giving the farmers seed to sow and telling them 
how to reap. It is destroying bugs and worms. It is 
building roads. It is planting and distributing seeds 
and flowers and plants and vines and trees. It is 
testing ploughs and reapers and thrashers. It is raising 
stock. It is invading the homes of the farmers and 
showing them, through teachers' and farmers' insti- 
tutes, how to till the land. It is experimenting upon the 
raising of horses and sheep and hogs and cattle. It is 
raising camels and operating ostrich farms. It is work- 
ing plantations, upon which is raised everything which 
is eaten or worn or drunk by man. It is teaching 
schools. It is raising tea. Its vast and varied ramifi- 
cations have invaded every province of the State. It 
has spent millions upon irrigation and is arranging to 
sell water upon a scale which minimizes the Egyptian 
government supplied by all the waters of the Nile. 
Under the provisions of this Department millions are 



Patriotism of tHe SoxitK 3^3 

appropriated to State normal schools, mechanical 
schools, agricultural schools, and high schools, thus 
making the most insidious attack upon the very heart 
of State life, and all of this without one line in the 
Constitution giving it any power whatsoever. With 
these enormous powers so lately assumed and in full 
growth, how soon will it be before the General Govern- 
ment will further invade the remaining rights of the 
State and take charge of the schools of the land ? It 
has the power to do so if it has the power it is at 
present exercising. A bill is pending in Congress and 
is being pushed by powerful influences, providing for 
appropriation to the State schools and providing for 
certain governmental supervision over them. Only a 
few years ago one of the great contests in this country 
was to prevent the government from practically as- 
suming control of the schools of the State. When the 
General Government educates the citizen the character 
of the Republic has been undermined to its very foun- 
dation. Under this sentiment, looking towards govern- 
mental authority and control, the militia of the country, 
by the National Militia Act, has been placed in close 
connection with, and under the supervision of, govern- 
ment officers. This bill especially provides for the 
acting together of the State militia and the troops of the 
government, and for the teaching of the State officers 
by the General Government, and provides for their 
subsistence whilst so engaged. Framers of the Consti- 
tution feared a standing army under the influence of 



304 Some SovitKern Qviestions 

tlie government. They solemnly provided for the 
right of the States to bear arms and for the separate 
State life of the militia. 

Whilst in every department of the General Govern- 
ment we witness the disregard of the States' rights and 
the infringement of constitutional powers and the 
gradual control of the affairs of the people by the Gen- 
eral Government, yet the growth of this sentiment in 
civil life, in commercial affairs and public sentiment is 
most marked. Time will allow me the mention of but 
few instances of this marvellous change in public 
sentiment as to governmental control and its effect. 
This new spirit has permeated every part of our life. 
Under the miasma of this fell influence, which looks 
only to convenience and success, gathering its volume 
from the busy toil of millions of men, has grown the 
feeling that congressional action is the proper course to 
control every demand and supply every deficiency in 
the life of the people. Under this influence a great 
convention, forgetting the sacredness of settled law, 
despising the landmarks between unlimited power and 
constitutional right, solemnly declares that the coal 
mines should be under the control of the General 
Government. This spirit demands governmental 
ownership of railroads and asks that the General Gov- 
ernment guarantee the deposits of national banks. It 
is demanding a bureau to take practical control of the 
mining of coal. It asks for control of divorce. It 
seeks supervision of all corporations. Congressional 



Patriotism of tHe SovitK 3°5 

action and governmental control is the panacea for all 
ills and is the hope of every interest. It has affected 
the very life of the State governments and the State 
courts. The powers of the State under the Constitution 
are as supreme within its sphere as are the powers of 
the General Government within its sphere. For the 
great purpose for which they were created the powers 
of the State are absolutely complete and effective. The 
justice of the peace under the State is as full of effective 
power within the State jurisdiction as is the United 
States commissioner. The sheriff of the county in 
one form or another has been enforcing the law, serving 
the writs, preserving the peace under the civil life of 
the Anglo-Saxon for a thousand years. The great inter- 
mediate nisi prius courts of the State are as full of juris- 
diction within the State, in every matter coming before 
them, as are the District and Circuit Courts of the 
United States. Yet in the great crises who appeals to 
these representatives of the powers of the State ? In 
every case they are clothed with full and complete 
power. In every case they have the full military and 
civil power of the State to enable them to carry out 
their orders and decrees. In no case within our ex- 
perience has this power which can be summoned by 
the ofl&cers of the State proved insufficient when there 
was vigor and courage and character in the action of 
the State officials. Notwithstanding this plenitude 
of State power every excuse is sought to appeal to the 
jurisdiction and officials of the National Government. 



3o6 Some SoxitKern Qxiestions 

In a great social cataclysm, with lawlessness un- 
loosed, with thousands of men threatening the peace of 
the State, with full desire and ability on my part to 
preserve its rights, with a successful and earnest effort 
being made to do so, my contest was not alone with the 
powers of lawlessness, but also with those who were 
clamoring for the interference and control of the United 
States Government. 

I have already transgressed too severely upon your 
patience for further illustration of this change of senti- 
ment as to the exercise of the ftmctions of our gov- 
ernmental life. 

The Fathers intended that this great dual system 
should be preserved in its entirety. Thus they created 
it and so they intended it to live. They gave it to us 
blessed with their patriotic endeavor, and it is a heritage 
from those who believed that the correct application of 
its co-equal powers was vital to the life of the Republic. 
Pursuing the course that we are following to-day the 
result is inevitable. The great lines of constitutional 
demarcation between the State and the General Gov- 
ernment will be destroyed. If the General Government, 
contrary to the spirit and letter of the Constitution, ex- 
ercises rights which have no place among its limited 
and delegated powers, the Constitution will rapidly be- 
come an instrument which public opinion may change 
to suit its interests and the convenience of the day, con- 
forming to the dictum of a late Vice-President of the 
United States that " its most remarkable feature is its 



Patriotism of tKe SovitK 307 

elastic flexibility, and its latent power througli which 
it has been enabled to conform to the necessities, the 
passions, and the aspirations of the people." If these 
strange doctrines are allowed to pervade the life of the 
people as to the theories and rights of government, ef- 
ficiency of action, power in execution and splendor of 
accomplishment will be looked to as the object of gov- 
ernment and as superior to the care and preservation of 
the sacred rights which have come down to us from the 
Fathers. And let me enter my protest against the 
proposition that we are pessimists, who demand that 
this government shall be administered in the spirit in 
which it was bequeathed to us and that the Constitution 
shall be adhered to in the substance and the letter. 
We, who believe that reserved rights should not be in- 
vaded, that delegated powers shall not become sovereign 
and despotic are not pessimists. No patriot would ar- 
rest the advancing life of the country. We appreciate 
that the progress of the day needs broad and liberal 
policies, but these policies of progress do not demand 
that we for them should destroy constitutional rights. 
We understand that this great Republic with its wealth 
of production demands the world for its market, but no 
triumph of material life will atone for a broken Consti- 
tution. We well know that vigorous action in the great 
matters of the day is necessary, but that vigor of execu- 
tion does not require that the basic and historic prin- 
ciples of a free people should be destroyed. We do not 
believe in the narrow and impracticable interpretation 



3o8 Some SoiatHem Questions 

of the Constitution which would destroy its efiBciency. 
We believe that the Constitution should be interpreted 
in the broadest spirit and on the fairest lines, but that 
its construction should not be wrenched nor its powers 
broadened beyond the thought of those who created 
this wonderful instrument. We believe that Congress 
may exercise all the powers that are plainly incidental 
to, deducible from, and not prohibited by the Constitu- 
tion. We believe that the executive officers of the 
General Government should use that marvellous instru- 
ment for the piu-poses for which it was established and 
no further. We believe that if the exigencies of mod- 
em life demand the amendment of the Constitution, 
that it shall be amended, not by act of Congress, 
sentiment of the people, or judicial construction, but 
that it shall be amended as provided in the Constitution. 
We demand no narrow construing of its provisions. 
We only ask an honest construction of the Consti- 
tution, and demand that the vast rights of the Gen- 
eral Government, already sufficiently strong for all the 
purposes for which they were intended, shall not be 
by implication unfairly extended, nor by usurpation 
misused. 

How shall the sentiment of the day be directed to 
the ways so long trod by us in safety and contentment ? 
Reverence for the hallowed traditions surrounding the 
birth of our country's life or an appeal to the naked 
words of the constitutional guarantees of the State will 
not preserve the equilibrium between the State and the 



Patriotism of the SoutK 3^9 

National Government, nor will mere jealousy of the 
growing ascendency of tlie National Government pre- 
vent it using powers not conferred. If we desire to 
maintain those rights it cannot be accomplished by a 
mere academic discussion of them. Patriotism demands 
infinitely more. The State must be exalted by its cit- 
izens, in its political, material, and moral life. The 
pride of the State in the maintaiuance of its powers 
must be revived. The character of the oflScials chosen 
by the State must be elevated. They must be taught 
by an enlightened and jealous public, that the rights of 
the State are sacred, and that he who through apathy 
or pusillanimity will allow any infraction of these rights 
will be Anathema. Am I not correct in asserting that 
under the spirit of the day the supreme object of patriot- 
ism should be the preservation of these great powers ? 
Only can we retain the constitutional position guaran- 
teed to the State by holding strong and true its great 
rights. Let us reason plainly with each other as 
brothers, united in a patriotic cause. This is not the 
spirit which in many States of the Union has charac- 
terized those who have been entrusted with the con- 
servation of the high powers of the State. We well 
understand that the widening sweep of the national life 
has never rested in its march of encroachment, yet this 
has not alone arisen from a desire of increased power 
by the National Government, but often because the 
rights of the State have not been upheld by its 
guardians. These rights have withered from the 



3IO Some SovitHern Q\iestions 

neglect of the States themselves. These rights have 
become quiescent through apathy. Sacred principles 
which uphold this marvellous fabric of our dual life 
have been supinely surrendered by those who controlled 
the destinies of the State. Governors to escape re- 
sponsibility have allowed unconstitutional encroach- 
ment on States' rights for which they should have been 
impeached. Judges have allowed their jiurisdiction to 
be invaded, for the permission of which the ermine 
should have been stripped from their shoulders. Legis- 
lators have allowed infractions of their constitutional 
powers, for which they should have been discredited 
and displaced by an outraged State. These conditions 
oftentimes prevailing have not always been due to 
those whom the State has elected to control its affairs. 
The officials of the State have not always been but- 
tressed by a high State pride in the people, a love of 
constitutional right, an exalted patriotism which would 
command them to hold to the full for every right and 
dignity of the State. This revival of the high ideals of 
the State in the minds of its officials and citizens, this 
jealousy of the preservation of the sacred powers of the 
State by its guardians, can only be eflfected by the 
revival of supreme and exalted patriotism and rever- 
ence for the Constitution in the souls of the citizens of 
the country. This spirit should teach that the powers 
of the State, whether judicial, legislative, or executive, 
are equal in dignity, character, and importance to those 
of the National Government. This State spirit must 



Patriotism of tHe SovitH 3^^ 

live in the high character and fearless assertion of State 
life and in the insistent demand of the citizen that con- 
stitutional guarantees shall remain unbroken and un- 
impaired in the letter and in the spirit. The State 
cannot become a silent partner in this government. Its 
powers must be made vital and its rights effective, and 
its assertion of those great powers must be sustained 
by the feeling which holds patriotism the chiefest and 
loftiest sentiment of human life. 

This crisis of our country demands, as never before, 
for its corrective, the vigorous life of the local ideal of 
patriotism. In this day of trial we appeal to the 
pristine unit of patriotism, the State, holding its chief 
power in the South no longer naked and powerless, but 
under Divine blessing thrilling with life and energy, 
and supported by a wealth of material power never 
surpassed by Imperial Rome or Old England. The 
South' s material power, even in this day of mighty 
accomplishment and feeling, can dignify any sentiment 
and give potency to any demand for a return to the 
faiths of the Fathers. Its credit is restored, great \ 
cities, the seats of vast commerce in every part of our 
Southern land, are glowing with energy unsurpassed. 
The fertile fields are laughing with the perennial 
harvests growing into fatness under our sunny skies, 
and the waving grain bows its heavy head under the 
benediction of plenty. Great systems of. railways are 
in tremendous struggle that they may be touched with 
the gleam of our golden lamp. Our mighty forests are 



312 Some SoxitHern Q\iestions 

ringing witli the sound of the saw and the axe, and our 
towns echo with the joy of contented labor, and are 
bright with the laughter of children at their play. The 
world is clothed with our cotton, and our towns are 
alive with the whir of the spindles. The red gleam of 
the manufactories marks on our sky the figures of our 
amazing wealth. From our shipyards and deep harbors 
the ships go on their trackless way, carrying our treas- 
ures to all peoples of the earth. Over rivers and 
through mountains and across the valleys thunders the 
locomotive, living emblem of the vitality of our Southern 
life. From our mines pour uncounted millions of the 
diamonds of commerce. From the inexhaustible plenty 
of the Creator stream rivers of oil. By Southern sea 
and broad river the trip-hammer beats a steady halle- 
lujah of praise. The machinery of our countless mills 
never ceases its song of rejoicing. Southern life is 
no longer wrapped with cerements of mourning, but 
crowned and glorified with the liUes and roses of pros- 
perity and contentment. When we contemplate her ma- 
terial wealth there arises before us the broad empire of 
Rome ; and we hear the rhythm of the oars of the trireme 
as it ploughs its way over river and sea, laden with its 
burden from the rich corn lands of Illyricum and Sicily 
and Africa. That fair temple and pillar may crown Im- 
perial Rome, we hear the stroke of the whip, as sweat- 
ing slaves quarry the marble from Pentelicus and 
Numidia, from Arabia and Paros. That Rome may 
enslave the world, we see the inexorable taskmaster 



Patriotism of tKe SovitK 3'^3 

fashioning sword and shackle in the red forges of 
Britain and Germany and Spain and Italy and Gaul. 
That ruby and sapphire may gleam in fillet and girdle, 
and that bread and the games be not denied the people, 
over the sands of the East hastens the dust-enshrouded 
caravan. For her, in Greece and Palestine and Asia 
Minor, the soft winds ripened the olive, and the 
pomegranate robbed the sun of its gold. For Rome, 
the cedars of Ivcbanon bowed their mighty heads, and 
Gaul and Britain gave of their oaks and their pines. 
That her altars might smoke with unfailing sacrifice 
and her phalanxes of iron and blood be strong, the 
shepherds watched with the stars on the plains of 
Esdraelon, and amidst the dews of the Elbe. When 
her iron legions had thundered past that she might pen 
her decrees to strange peoples and to far-off lands, 
through the soft waters of the Nile the papyrus lifted 
its slender stalk. That from Brundisia and Ostia the 
galleys filled with the legions could cover the sea from 
Phoenicia to the Pillars of Hercules, so that Rome 
might hold her tribute world and keep her iron hand 
on all the people, the Mediterranean slept in beauty 
and peace. 

Here in our South are conditions of dominion be- 
yond dreams of Roman consul or emperor. With ten 
millions more people than composed the Roman citizen- 
ship, with five hundred millions more of the inhabitants 
of the earth needing the products of our field and hand 
and workshop than were tributary to Imperial Rome, 



\ 



314 Some SovitHern Questions 

witli more iron in one State than was in all of Britain 
and Spain and Gaul and Germany, with the ability to 
produce more bread ten times over than could Gaul 
and Africa and Sicily and the Nile, with more varied 
fruits in one State than coiild grow in all the fields and 
gardens of that kingdom of iron, never could Imperial 
Rome aspire to the real, material dominion easily within 
the grasp of the South. In our South, in one State, is 
sufl&cient marble to create again every temple and city 
which graced with glowing life the rivers and plains of 
the Imperial Kingdom. Here in the South are mighty 
rivers on whose bosoms float in one year argosies 
more precious than in one hundred years of Roman life 
vexed the current of the Tiber, the Seine, the Rhone, 
the Danube, and the Nile. Here, in the fields of one 
Southern State, grow the lowing herds, ample to supply 
every blood-stained altar of Rome with sacrifice and to 
furnish with food every Roman citizen. Here is every- 
thing needed for dominion, iron and gold, wine and 
oil, fruit and food, cotton and wool, tin and copper, 
timber and marble, in limitless quantities, yea, far 
beyond the voracity and capacity of Ancient Rome. 
Around this Southern land, He from whose urn poured 
the waters and whose hands fashioned the Continents 
has laid great oceans, and a mighty sea, from whose 
shores rise the majestic portals of the gateway to all the 
oceans and to all the people, a sea holding the land 
lovingly in deep embrace and whose smiling bosom is 
caressed by odor of fruit and flower and vine, from 



Patriotism of tKe SoutK 315 

islands whose skies are brighter and whose soil is more 
life-giving than the magical lands of the Mediterranean. 

Yea, more potent than Roman phalanx or the corn 
lands of Africa or the riches of the East, there walk 
with us the arts and sciences, and over our land, like 
the benison of a mother's blessing at eventide, fall the 
words of the Blessed Son of Man, " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." 

Old England has placed her constitutional govern- 
ment, her customs, and her language, wherever woman 
loves and man can labor. Her hand is more potent in 
the directing of mankind's destinies than ever was that 
of Spanish king or Roman emperor. This material 
mastery she has achieved through her possession of iron 
and coal and through her ability to manufacture. One 
Southern State possesses more and better coal twice 
over, and the whole of the South has ten times more 
coal than England. One State of the South possesses 
more iron than the whole of mighty England, and 
without the South' s cotton supply, the fires would die 
on the hearths of England's workmen and silence 
would reign in her busy streets. 

Supported by a dignity of power dazzling even to the 
materialism of the day the South appeals to the Repub- 
lic from a grander and a more exalted height than that 
of mere material power. From the depths of a patriot- 
ism which through conflict and sorrow has never les- 
sened in its power, she asks the Republic to return to 
the old faiths and abide with us along the old ways of 



3i6 Some SovitKern Qxiestions 

constitutional government. Here in the South are the 
pristine ideals alive and virile. Here is a homogene- 
ous people, untouched by alien blood and holding 
hands through this native life with the Fathers of the 
Republic. 

Amidst the thunderings and the lightnings of our 
day of trial the Tables of the Law were not broken. 
We have kept them unscathed by fire and unchanged 
by time, and holding them before the people ask that 
their sacred words be once more a guide to their feet 
wandering in far distant ways. Dwelling under the 
lintels of the States which watched at the birth of the 
Republic, we are filled with a love of the olden ideals. 
With us has lingered those faiths and around the State 
has grown the sweetest and the most abiding sentiment 
and affection. From race and tradition, and from sac- 
rifice which appalled the world by the breadth of its 
unselfishness, there is with the South that wealth of 
local patriotism which jealously holds the State to its 
high and equal place in this government of co-ordinate 
powers. 

Accepting the conclusions of the great conflict in the 
broadest and most catholic spirit, yet holding to the 
ancient principles of state government, with patriotism 
which knows no sectional feeling, we wish to hold up 
the hands of the Republic in this crisis of its civil life. 
With naught of feeling but love, we ask our brothers to 
dwell with us again under the same vine and tree and 
journey over the long-known road, and with us keep 



Patriotism of tHe SoxitK 317 

pure and untouched those great rights affecting with 
equal power the State and the Union. 

The South would not for the wealth of the Indies^^ 
destroy one power or impair one constitutional right of 
the Union. Its glorious life is the object of our pride 
and love, and its future the subject of our prayers, 
lyove for the State is entirely consonant with affection 
for the Union. They should go hand in hand, neither 
seeking the powers, or desiring control of the rights of 
the other. The South believes that if in the crisis of 
our country's life the people grow towards " partial and 
transitory interests they would renounce the blessings 
prepared for them by the Revolution." The Fathers, 
with a wondrous prescience of the mighty power which 
would develop in the Republic, did not concern them- 
selves with the protection of our country against foreign 
foes. They were more greatly interested as to our 
ability to exercise self-control within our internal life. 

I have but endeavored to point out in the evolution 
of our country's life the evidences of the want of that 
self-control which is so necessary to a free people, and 
to indicate the great restraining influence against the 
radicalism which would destroy the ancient faiths. To 
you, young gentlemen, will be entrusted these great 
questions, with you will be the power for the years to 
come to decide the momentous problem, whether the 
Republic will go into the future a government of naked 
force filled with powers forbidden — or will you summon 
around you the spirits of the Fathers and pray for that 



3i8 Some SoiatHern Q\aestions 

exaltation of character which will preserve this Repub- 
lic with its powers crowned with self-restraint, with its 
life blessed with holy and abiding patriotism, and its 
acts controlled by the high ideals which amidsf sorrow 
and joy have been preserved as the dearest birthright 
of this blessed land of the South ? 

And may He who, for His own purpose, led our 
Fathers across the trackless sea to this goodly land, 
who blessed their labors with the night-tide and the 
morning sun, who in distress covered them with the 
deep shadow of His wing, lead you in these great mat- 
ters to that conclusion which will lay no arresting hand 
on the progress of this people on its march for the up- 
lifting of all of the nations of the e^rth. 



H 16 89 



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